Since it opened in 1988, the Glen Sather Sports Medicine Clinic has been a cornerstone of care for everyone from professional athletes to everyday active Edmontonians.
But in January, the facility at the Edmonton Kaye Clinic on the University of Alberta campus will close its doors for good.
Staff were told earlier this month that the clinic will shut down, with the University of Alberta citing financial losses of between $600,000 and $900,000 in each of the past three years.
“Despite efforts to adapt to shifting environments within the medical fields, the financial position of the clinic has made it unsustainable,” said Kevin Moffatt, the vice-president facilities & operations at the University of Alberta.
“Closing the clinic is one of the difficult decisions the university has to make in reducing these kinds of expenditures.”
Moffatt said empty appointment slots and growing competition left the clinic unable to recover costs.
“Our biggest problem was our ability to attract clinicians to our clinic to fill all the empty clinic times that we had,” Moffatt said. “Without the clinic times being full, we weren’t generating enough revenue to meet our expenditures that we have.”
But there’s frustration among the staff who told Global News they were informed of the decision in early September, leaving them only four months to try and mitigate the impact on patients.
“I was shocked, disappointed and sad all at the same time and also worried for how we’re going to manage our patients,” Yung Yung Wong, a physiotherapist for the past seven years at the clinic, told Global News.
“Our primary goal is making sure that they’re okay and what will happen to the team of clinicians that we work so well together.”
The university said when the Glen Sather Sports Medicine Clinic (GSSMC) opened in October 1988, there was nothing else like it in Edmonton.
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Officials said the multi-disciplinary team aspect, including sports medicine, orthopedic surgeons, rehabilitation, physical therapists, massage therapists and orthotists under one roof, was “a ground-breaking idea”, but said, times have changed, and the model has been replicated elsewhere.
“Teams that once used the clinic now have their own specialists and clinicians,” said Katherine Huising, associate vice-president of campus services. “As the landscape became more competitive, GSSMC struggled to find its place in the marketplace.”
Glen Sather staff reject claim clinic no longer needed
But the doctors and other medical staff who work in the facility disagree.
Marni Wesner has been a sport medicine physician for 27 years at the Glen Sather but stresses the care offered is not just for athletes.
“This clinic has been about the average, everyday person who’s being active and wants to stay healthy and stay fit and stay involved in their activities,” she said.
In fact, the misconception they only treat sports teams and professional athletes might just be her biggest pet peeve.
“This is care for active, healthy Edmontonians who want to stay active and healthy. It’s the care that the elite athletes, the professional athletes, get – for you. And that is not something that, if we don’t continue, can easily be replaced.”
Wesner has worked with elite athletes and was a part of the Canadian health care team at five FISU games, three Olympic games and a Commonwealth and PanAmerican Games.
She’s travelled extensively with hockey, figure skating and basketball to competitions all over the world, including participating in 15 world championships.
While her resume is impressive, she stresses her treatments are for everyone and news of the facility closing has her worried for patients who need the Glen Sather’s unique style of care.
“The university made this announcement without any input or collaboration from any of the physicians or physios in the clinic,” Wesner said.
“We were blindsided by the comments and some of the narrative that they’re spinning isn’t, in fact, correct.”
Dr. Wesner argues the clinic’s collaborative approach remains unique.
“It’s certainly not how most sport medicine practices run,” she said.
“When I’m seeing a patient in my office with a physiotherapist and we think there might be a surgical problem, I can literally close this door and walk into the next and ask the orthopedic surgeon what they are thinking.”
Dr. Wesner is also concerned about the impact this will have on the research and educational community at the University of Alberta, specifically when it comes to teaching future medical students.
“We teach all of the family medicine residents, musculoskeletal and sport medicine, physiotherapy teaches all the physio students, we’ve got kinesiology students — so if we’re not here in a teaching capacity, I don’t know who’s going teach all those students,” she said.
“The research has been conducted in the clinic, I’m not sure how it’s going to continue yet because it’s not going to be at the university.”
Moffatt said the clinicians have an advisory committee that the university has met with over the past two years.
“That advisory committee represents each of the different disciplines within the clinic and they were made fully aware of the financial situations within the clinical and the fact that this would not be sustainable over the long-term,” Moffatt said.
Glen Sather team committed to reopening elsewhere
The university said it will help facilitate the move of patient’s records once the clinic is closed in January 2026. Providers said it will continue to be “business as usual” until then.
The closure will result in the loss of 10 full-time and four part-time positions as well as seven auxiliary/casual positions at the University of Alberta.
“While this decision was necessary from a financial point of view, it is never easy to reduce staffing, and we know this news will have an impact on the U of A community,” Huising said.
Wesner and other care providers said they are looking to open a similarly functioning clinic in the near future, hoping to lessen the impact on patients once the Glen Sather is closed — but four months is not a long time to set up that type of facility.
“Where that’s going to be, we just don’t know yet,” Wesner said.
“The clinic isn’t these four wall, the clinic is the people in it — and the people in it have committed to staying together.”
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