Hospitals partner to serve Springfield Cardinals

St. John’s is the Springfield Cardinals official sports medicine provider. “What they do is take care of our players and their needs as they arise. They work in partnership with our medical director. St. John’s also provides our ambulance service for any on-field incidents,” said Springfield Cardinals General Manager Matt Gifford.

CoxHealth is the team’s official medical center. “They provide first aid and emergency service in the stands, then they support us in all other aspects of medical systems,” Gifford said.

Partnerships

The hospitals’ five-year agreements with the Springfield Cardinals go beyond the games.

CoxHealth provides first aid and emergency services inside the stadium, membership at Cox Fitness Centers for players and coaches, and the team partners with Children’s Miracle Network. In addition, CoxHealth sponsors activities during games and presents wellness and screening activities at select games.

St. John’s provides team access to its fitness centers and rehabilitation services at the hospital’s sports medicine center, and it has an ambulance and paramedics on duty at each game.

Gifford and hospital officials would not discuss financial details of the arrangements.

Bill Hennessy, senior vice president for planning and marketing at St. John’s, said the hospital’s role as official sports medicine provider was exactly what hospital officials had hoped for. The arrangement, he said, is much more than a form of advertising.

“Sports medicine is a specialty, and it’s something that we have provided a focus on for the last decade,” he said. “There’s marketing that goes along with it, of course, but this is a medical decision.”

Lines aren’t drawn in the sand regarding the two hospitals’ relationships with the team and the physicians. Steve Edwards, senior vice president-administrator for Cox Medical Centers, said it’s a complex relationship.

“It’s a partnership that takes three players to work, and St. John’s and our doctors work in unison in some of these patient care issues, especially with injury-related programs,” he said.

Dr. Chris Miller, an orthopedic surgeon with Orthopaedic Specialists of Springfield, is the team’s medical director, a position for which he is not paid.

“It’s on my own time, although when they get injured I bill for surgery and things like that,” Miller said, adding that medical director responsibilities require about 50 to 60 hours per month of his time.

Miller and four other physicians – Richard Kissell, CoxHealth internist; Brian Mahaffey, director of St. John’s Sports Medicine; and St. John’s orthopedists Rick Seagrave and Tom Kelso – make sure a physician is at each of the 70 home games.

Cardinals baseball is nothing new to Kissell.

“My dad has been with the (St. Louis) Cardinals since 1940,” Kissell said. George Kissell, 84, started as a player in the minor league and worked as a scout, third base coach and senior field coordinator.

“I played one year in the rookie league in 1967 in the summer, then I got into medical school that fall, and so I made a decision at that time that I thought it would be more advisable to be a physician than a baseball player,” Richard Kissell said.

If a player is hurt, Gifford said, care is provided by a combination of Miller and the doctors at St. John’s Sports Medicine. “They work in concert to make sure that our players get the best coverage that they can,” he said.

Miller may use facilities at Cox, St. John’s, or Orthopaedic Specialists of Springfield if a player requires surgery.

“If it’s a problem out of my realm of expertise … I just would refer them to whoever I thought was the best person for the job at either one of those two hospitals,” Miller said.

In-house benefits

Employees at both hospitals benefit from their employers’ relationships with the Cardinals.

As part of the deal, Cox receives 40 seats at each of the 70 home games, with some used to honor staff and the majority distributed through a lottery system.

St. John’s receives an undisclosed number of tickets, and Hennessey said St. John’s box at Hammons Field is used for special recognition for groups, teams and individuals who’ve gone “above and beyond in providing service to our patients.”

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