From left: Anna Stephens, MSN, CRNP; Shane Strom, M.D.; and Mallory Myers, PA
As the only stand-alone children’s hospital in the state and the sole tertiary referral center, Children’s of Alabama already fielded a robust demand for orthopedic services. But steady population growth in the Birmingham area—combined with lengthening waits for clinic appointments—have prompted Children’s to expand its orthopedic team to accommodate the need.
Since late 2022, the team has added two orthopedic surgeons and two advanced practice providers. The division now has six surgeons and four advanced practice providers. These empower the department to meet patients’ needs as demand increases. That has continued at a clip of 10% to 20% year over year since 2020, says orthopedic surgeon Kevin Williams, M.D., who came to Children’s four years ago.
“We’re constantly looking to provide better care for children of Alabama,” said Williams, who’s also an assistant professor of orthopedic surgery at University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB). “One way was to put more providers in place who can take care of these patients in clinic and think about how to best care for children with difficult pathologies.”
Several thousand young patients seek inpatient and outpatient orthopedic care at Children’s each year. The most common conditions the team treats include fractures around the elbow—which comprise up to 70% of orthopedic surgeries at Children’s—along with scoliosis, hip dysplasia, cerebral palsy and other spastic neuromuscular conditions.
“There’s just an overflow of patients, so provider schedules were extremely full, and they were booking appointments months and months out,” explained pediatric nurse practitioner Anna Stephens, MSN, CRNP, who joined the department in 2023 after working in several capacities at Children’s since 2017. “More providers were needed to get patients seen in an appropriate time frame.”
The new faculty and staff members not only round out the department roster, but also add flexibility to everyone’s roles, said orthopedic surgeon Shane Strom, M.D., who joined in September 2023 after completing a fellowship in at Scottish Rite for Children in Dallas.
Advanced practice providers can see patients independently, freeing up surgeons for surgical cases. They can also assist in the operating room, Williams notes, “which, with the increase in OR numbers, has been really helpful.”
But, “not everything we do is surgical,” said Strom, who’s also an assistant professor of pediatric orthopedics at UAB. “With clinic numbers being higher and wait times to get in to see a provider longer, adding advanced practice providers can help with non-operative care, such as casting or treating club feet with bracing.”
Physician assistant Mallory Myers, PA, who joined the department in February 2023, agrees. “The expansion allows surgeons to have more time focusing on complex patients and surgical patients without making non-surgical patients wait longer times to be seen,” she said. “Also, nurse practitioners and physician assistants have a similar clinical scope, but the way we’re trained is different, so it’s a benefit to have multiple points of view.”
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