By Michael Howell
Dr. Kirk Crews has been practicing family medicine in Stevensville for more than 17 years. But this coming year promises to be a little different, maybe a lot different, as he steps out of the corporate environment in which he has been so long engaged, to open up an independent family practice of his own. The doors will open in February at the new clinic, named StoryBrook Medicine, located at 401 Main Street in Stevensville in the building that housed the original Stevensville Medical Clinic. The building brings back memories to Crews. He got all his annual sports physicals there while attending high school in Florence.
After graduating from Florence High School, Crews attended both the University of Montana and Concordia College in Moorehead, Minnesota for his undergraduate degree in Biology. After working at Community Hospital for a year as an orderly, he attended the University of Washington School of Medicine, first in Bozeman through the WWAMI program and then the last three years were spent in Seattle. After that, Crews became one of the first residents ever trained in Montana through the new Family Medicine Residency in Billings. Then, in 1999, he returned to the Bitterroot Valley to raise a family and develop a practice in Stevensville, where he worked for Providence Medical Group Lifespan Family Medicine until resigning last month to start his own practice.
Crews has practiced family medicine throughout his career, caring for newborns, children, adolescents and adults. He has also developed a few specialized skills including colonoscopies, skin cancer evaluation and removals, and diabetic care. But what he enjoys most about family practice is the opportunity to care for the whole family, from newborns to grandparents.
“One of the best parts of being a rural family physician,” said Crews, “is the relationships that develop over years. Knowing patients and understanding their perspectives goes a long way in being able to both earn trust and to better diagnose medical problems.”
According to Crews, in the past few years there have been a tremendous number of new challenges in medicine for both patients and the providers of care. Some of the changes have brought about a great deal of frustration for all parties involved. Crews believes everybody, patients, nurses and doctors alike, are looking for ways to better connect with each other.
If you ask him, Crews will tell you that the most important part of medicine is the part where he listens, and then focuses his efforts on how to help.
He said that with so much effort being placed on collecting data, using computers in medicine and all the changes in health care, it can be easy to miss the fact that the reason to help people be healthy is so that they can go out and do all those other things that good health allows them to do.
“At StoryBrook Medicine, my hope is that I can help to be the springboard for better health and more enjoyable living,” said Crews.