Orthopedic screenings to be part of 2024 Community Health Fair

ROBERT PIERCE

   • Leader & Times

Southwest Medical Center’s Orthopedic & Sports Medicine Care Center performs a variety of services for patients, and orthopedic surgeon Dr. Firas Kawtharani believes many people in the area are not aware of those services.

This is why Kawtharani also feels the annual Community Health Fair hosted by SWMC is a great opportunity to educate people on what is department has to offer.

The Orthopedic & Sports Medicine Care Center is one of many vendors that will have a booth at this year’s Health Fair Oct. 5 at the Seward County Activity Center, and in addition to letting people know about center’s services, Kawtharani said screenings will be done as well.

“Every year, we meet the people of Liberal,” he said. “We examine them. We tell them what we do. Surprisingly, not a lot of people know about us. I’ve been here for six years. We try to give them a spectrum of things we do. If they have a specific complaint, we try to tackle it within reason at the Health Fair.”

Kawtharani said while the Health Fair does not provide the means to tackle many ailments, visitors can get an introduction to what the SWMC practice does.

“We refer them to the office so we can examine them more in depth so they can know more about us and what we do,” he said.

Kawtharani said the Orthopedic & Sports Medicine Care Center handles bone and joint problems, and at the Health Fair, he has a small booth where patients can get a basic examination.

“If they have a specific complaint regarding a joint or a bone, we can do a small focused examination,” he said. “We give them an idea about what we think is happening. If they need further testing, X-rays or more details, we can give them an appointment in the office and do an evaluation.”

Kawtharani said workers with the care center have been doing the booth at the Health Fair for several years, and he said about 15 to 20 people come through the booth, which he said is a considerable number for the five hours in which the Health Fair takes place.

“The whole point is to have the folks know about us, know we’re here and we provide a service,” he said. “We actually have a lot of things we provide in this hospital way more than other hospitals do, and we want them to know that.”

One of the services SWMC provides that other hospitals do not is interior hips, and Kawtharani said other than Liberal, the closest facility for such procedures is found in Kansas City.

“Even in Wichita, they don’t do interior hips,” he said. “We do robotic knees. In Pratt, they don’t do robotic knees. Other hospitals like Dodge City are trying to pick up on that. We provide services that are top notch, but the problem is access, marketing and advertising. We need to work more on that so people know about the services. The Health Fair provides a part of that.”

Kawtharani said he can talk much more about what he provides in the office setting.

“I do as much as I can at the Health Fair,” he said. “We have to do a little more homework and getting more brochures regarding the specific procedures we do. That will help a lot. Sometimes, a picture can explain what we do. We have models of knees and hips.  I want people to know we have a really long list of procedures and state-of-the-art procedures we can do here in Liberal.”

Kawtharani said he would like to see more people, a bigger variety of ages and conditions and more questions and clarifications for people at this year’s Health Fair.

“We can provide them with other details about what we do,” he said.

The Orthopedic & Sports Medicine Care Center accepts new patients of all ages and most insurances, including Blue Cross Blue Shield, Medicare and Kansas and Oklahoma Medicaid.

“As a hospital, we go out of our way,” Kawtharani said. “A lot of other facilities or hospitals do not have the capability of covering all sorts of insurances including Medicaid, government insurances, state insurances. We do that.”

The care center provides orthopedic services such as arthroscopy, amputations, biopsies, bone grafts, fracture fixation, hand and wrist surgery, orthopedic spine surgery, percutaneous vertebroplasty, balloon kyphoplasty, orthopedic trauma, musculoskeletal oncology and pediatric orthopedics.

Sports medicine services are offered as well, including muscle and tendon repair, sprains and strains, along with major arthroplasty for knee, hip and shoulder joints and minimally invasive total hip arthroplasty.

Finally, the care center offers wound care for complicated and chronic wounds, as well as compromised skin grafts and hyperbaric oxygen therapy.

“We deal with traumatic injuries,” Kawtharani said. “We deal with sports injuries. We deal with arthritic conditions, elective surgery. We deal with certain spine fractures. We can do cement augmentation and deeper augmentation for them. There’s a lot of things we can do to help them out.”

The Community Health Fair is scheduled to take place from 7 a.m. to noon Saturday, Oct. 5, at the Activity Center.