Movement is Medicine
When our chief clinical officer, Dr. Mike Hardin began dreaming with architects about a new central location building over ten years ago, the task was to imagine a space that could treat the whole patient. A place filled not just with exam rooms and a pharmacy, but a space with a market place to address the social drivers of health that inhibit patient wellness. A space with a first class kitchen complimented by community gardens so we could educate patients in culinary arts. A space with centering rooms for expecting mothers, and counseling center to address behavioral health needs. And my personal favorite, The Shane Turner Wellness Center.
The Shane Turner Wellness Center is outfitted with resistance training equipment, free weights, cardiovascular machines, and a team of exercise physiologists among other things. This means that when one of our primary care physicians determines that what a patient needs is exercise, we can offer them a place to do it.
Here’s how it works. After physicians identify that a patient could benefit from movement as medicine, they refer them to our team of exercise physiologists (here after EP). Patients then meet with one of our EPs for an initial consultation. During this meeting they discuss the patient’s limitations, health history, and goals. From the information gathered in that appointment EPs make a patient plan that takes into consideration how many days a week the patient can commit to, which equipment best suits their needs, and what kind of health outcomes they are looking for. At each appointment EPs record the patient’s weight, blood pressure, and heart rate before the session and their blood pressure and heart rate again when it’s finished. All this data is logged and tracked through Epic so that the patient’s care team can monitor the progress. These EP sessions last 6-8 times and then the patient is free to use the wellness center in perpetuity without cost to them. And they do!
I recently spoke with our wellness center coordinator Rae Lucas. Her team consists of her, a wellness center specialist, and a team of three Baylor graduate student fitness advisors who work for Waco Family Medicine as part of their exercise physiology program. Lucas shared some of the patient data with me. In 2025 her team hosted 11,418 patient visits. And if you’ve ever wondered if the building makes a difference, that number is up from 5,923 in 2024. Prior to its location in our new building, the wellness center was located on the first floor of the Cooper building adjacent to our current location. It turns out that a short walk was a big barrier to getting patience in the gym. Lucas again: “We didn’t realize how big of a barrier just walking across the street to MC3 was. Having this space has made a world of difference. It feels like a gym, looks like a gym, and we feel more integrated into the whole organization.”
But the wellness center isn’t just producing quantity, they are producing quality. Lucas shared a few stories about patient transformation. “There was one woman who came to her first session in a wheelchair. She had limited motion and not much strength. Now she comes in with a walker, does 30 minutes on the rower, 30 on the armbike, and 30 on the elliptical. And she does strength training. The transformation is wild!”
The stories and numbers coming out of the Shane Turner Wellness Center are a reminder that sometimes the medicine a patient needs cannot be found in a bottle. Sometimes it looks like a physician recognizing that movement could change the trajectory of a patient’s health. Sometimes it looks like an exercise physiologist sitting down with someone to build a plan around their limitations and goals. And sometimes it looks like a woman who once arrived in a wheelchair discovering that she is capable of rowing, cycling, lifting, and moving again. That was part of the dream when this building was first imagined: to create a place where we could treat the whole person. More than a decade later, and with more than 11,000+ patient visits in a single year, it is clear that the Shane Turner Wellness Center is doing exactly that. At Waco Family Medicine, movement isn’t just something we encourage our patients to do. For thousands of them, it has become part of the medicine we provide.
