When an NFL player is hurt, fans might see the injury as just a reduced chance of their team winning.
Dr. James Voos sees more than that. The Cleveland Browns’ head physician has bonded with the players.
“You know what their stressors are in their personal lives and what injuries they are working through,” Voos says. “You know the years of work they’ve put in and how much it takes for them to be out there playing at such a high level. It ties you to the athlete and the team and you really want to help them.
“So when an injury does occur, it’s impactful, because you know how hard they worked and now they have this moment where they just can’t play.”
Voos has earned a special award of league-wide recognition for groundbreaking research that could reshape how athletes and doctors treat ACL injuries. He was given the NFL Physicians Society’s Arthur C. Rettig Award for Academic Excellence during the NFL Physicians Society’s (NFLPS) Scientific Meeting at the 2023 NFL Combine for his research project, “Return to Play Assessment After ACL Reconstruction Using Wearable Technology,” which he presented during the meeting.
The prestigious award is given annually to an NFL team physician for academic excellence in research in advancing the health and safety of players in the NFL.
Voos is also vice president of the NFL Physicians Society, the elite group of doctors who care for 1,600 professional football players across 32 teams. Next year, he becomes president, and he says the biggest game changer he’s witnessed during his time with the organization is how pro sports medical care has shifted its focus.
But he’s not just dedicated to the pros.
Voos is also chairman of the orthopedics departments at both University Hospitals and Case Western Reserve University. Entering his 10th season with the Browns, he has helped transform sports medicine, not just in the NFL but in youth sports.
The Browns, in partnership with UH, now takes a proactive and preventative approach instead of a reactive approach to injuries. The two organizations have used what they’ve learned treating Browns players and applied the knowledge to athletic training and recovery regimens at more than 70 Greater Cleveland high schools, five colleges and several youth organizations.
That effort culminated in June with the grand opening of the Drusinsky Sports Medicine Institute at UH’s Ahuja Medical Center in Beachwood. It’s a 70,000-square-foot fieldhouse where young, amateur athletes are rehabilitated if they’re injured and taught how to avoid injuries if they’re healthy.
The center was Voos’ dream.
“Doctors have certain skills, but he has the full package,” Dee Haslam, Browns co-owner, says of Voos. “He is incredibly gifted as a physician and incredibly gifted at leadership and entrepreneurship and innovation — things you don’t normally expect out of a physician.”
Before coming to Cleveland in 2014, Voos trained at The Hospital for Special Surgery, a top-ranked orthopedic hospital in New York City. There, he helped treat New York Giants players. Then he became assistant team physician for the Kansas City Chiefs for four years.
The Browns hired Voos just as the team named UH its official health care partner.
“When we entered the partnership with UH, the mission was to find the best orthopedic department and physicians group we could with the best and brightest young minds in the business,” Haslam says. “Dr. Voos’ name came up fairly quickly.”
As a member of the NFL’s Musculoskeletal Committee, Voos helped introduce wearable technology, sensors that show a player’s speed, explosiveness and change of direction, comparing these factors during physical rehab to their normal workload.
“If we see a spike in the readings, we know they may be at risk of injury,” Voos says. “Or if they’re coming back from an injury, we can see if they’re hitting their top speed.”
Other developments Voos has been involved with over the last 10 years include less invasive surgeries, use of stem cells to harness the body’s restorative functions, the NFL’s concussion protocol and new helmets designed to prevent concussions.
Meanwhile, UH, in partnership with the Browns, provides athletic trainers to local schools and handles their health and safety programs. At the Drusinsky center, injured youth athletes benefit from rehab techniques.
“The goal is to change how we do rehabilitation, with less sitting on the table doing old-fashioned physical therapy and being more active, and rehabilitating by practicing your sport,” Voos says.
