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William McCormick, a partner in Saco Bay Orthopaedic and Sports Physical Therapy, says the clinic’s South Portland health club will keep attendance and share members’ progress with their family doctors.

SOUTH PORTLAND — William McCormick said he has the solution to the problem that renders many well-intentioned, turn-of-the-year pledges to get in shape a failure by late February.

He is opening a gym that keeps attendance and shares members' progress – or lack thereof – with their family doctors.

"The gym industry, that's what they want," McCormick said of the memberships that often go unused after a couple of months. "From our end of it, that's exactly what we don't want."

McCormick, a partner in Saco Bay Orthopaedic and Sports Physical Therapy, wants to enroll up to 800 members at the clinic's 10,000-square-foot health club near the Maine Mall and Portland International Jetport.

He said there's a market in the Portland area for a "medically oriented gym" – where physical therapists and doctors design and track workout programs meant to lower cholestorol levels, keep blood sugar in check or fully rehabilitate injuries.

Experts said that although the concept is nothing new, this is the first time it has been tried on a large scale in southern Maine.

Physical therapists said specialty gyms fill a niche between medical care and traditional fitness training. They said the facilities also help better transition patients to full strength after injuries, at a time when insurance companies rarely foot the bill for total rehabilitation.

"It's a gap that needs to be filled," said Gwen Simons, president of the American Physical Therapy Association's Maine chapter.

Saco Bay agreed to lease the former Fairchild Semiconductor gym late last year and moved its South Portland physical therapy clinic – one of nine the company runs – there earlier this month. Fairchild employees still will use the gym, at the corner of Western Avenue and Foden Road.

McCormick said he decided to try the concept after reading about a similar facility in a suburb of Buffalo, N.Y.

The M.O.G. in Grand Island has grown from 300 members shortly after it opened in 2005 to around 600 today, said Vincenette San Lorenzo, director of operations at the facility.

The gym, linked to a physical therapy clinic, charges members $500 a year (almost $42 a month) and tracks their progress monthly – measuring data such as body mass index and blood pressure, and sharing that information with primary care physicians, San Lorenzo said.

Physical therapists there also re-assess members' training plans every month and tweak them if necessary, she said.

Her gym also apprises doctors of their patients' attendance. San Lorenzo said absenteeism hasn't been a major problem.

Saco Bay will run its South Portland gym in a similar fashion, McCormick said. The clinic plans to charge around $40 a month for membership, which is on the higher end of what traditional gyms in the area charge.

Experts said the main difference between mainstream gyms and the one Saco Bay plans to open is the personnel. Physical therapists craft workout plans to fit a medical diagnosis and deliver progress reports to doctors, they said.

"You've got people who go to physical trainers – if that person's healthy, then fine," said Simons, who runs Orthopaedic Physical Therapy Associates in Scarborough. "But if they're not healthy having that physical therapist with special knowledge is really important."

The tailored plans also help prevent attrition, said Susan Ramsey, president of Holistic Physical Therapy Services in South Portland. "That's why a lot of people give up. They can't do a regular program and they get discouraged and they give up."

Both Ramsey and Simons run specialty exercise facilities at their clinics. Ramsey has about 70 patients in yoga and Pilates classes; Simons runs a small gym with about 10 members.

Experts said the cultural climate bodes well for the new gym despite the sour economy. About a third of...