Kevin E.
Groh.
Physician assistant in physical medicine & rehabilitation — helping patients reclaim function after injury, surgery, and illness.
Thirteen years of medicine,
and the long view.
I'm a board-certified physician assistant practicing physical medicine and rehabilitation. After thirteen years in orthopedic and spine care — where the work is surgical, the pace is fast, and the calls are sharp — I made the move to physiatry. The patients are different: recovering from strokes, major surgeries, long illnesses, complicated injuries. The goal is no longer just to fix the structure; it's to restore the person.
Today I practice with Medrina, the nation's largest physiatry group, working inside skilled nursing facilities across Middle Tennessee. Day to day, that looks like functional assessments, pain and medication management, coordinating with the PT and OT teams, and helping patients and families understand what's realistic, what's hard, and what's worth fighting for on the way home.
Away from clinic I'm home with my wife and son — easily the best chapter I've lived. The rest of my time goes to the things that keep me sharp: the gym, a long trail, a good kitchen, a stack of books, and the slow work of being genuinely present at home.
The quiet parts of medicine — the conversations, the follow-through, the families at bedside — are where most of the real work happens.
Where I focus.
Physiatry & PM&R
Functional assessment and rehabilitation management for post-acute patients. Diagnosing what's limiting mobility, building a realistic recovery plan, and working shoulder-to-shoulder with physical and occupational therapy teams.
Skilled Nursing & Post-Acute
Care for patients recovering from stroke, joint replacement, spinal surgery, major illness, and complex medical events. The goal is functional independence — walking, transferring, returning home safely when possible.
Pain Management
Thoughtful, conservative pain control in a vulnerable population. Balancing relief with function, avoiding the traps that derail recovery, and using injections and procedures when the picture genuinely calls for it.
Orthopedic Foundation
More than a decade of orthopedic practice — general ortho, sports medicine, high-volume injection clinics, fracture care, bracing, return-to-work planning. That foundation shows up every day in the rehab setting.
Surgical Spine (Prior)
First-assist experience across cervical, thoracic, and lumbar procedures — ACDF, foraminotomy, decompression, fusion, and spinal cord stimulator implantation. Still informs how I think about spine patients in rehab.
Teaching & Mentorship
Trained more than fifteen new physician assistants across specialties. I enjoy the onboarding years — when the right habits and instincts are still being formed — and try to pass on the ones that actually matter.
A career, so far.
A working history.
Physician Assistant, Physiatry & PM&R
Physical medicine and rehabilitation across skilled nursing facilities throughout Middle Tennessee, as part of Medrina — the nation's largest physiatry group. The work is functional assessment, pain management, and rehabilitation planning, side-by-side with PT and OT teams, to move post-acute patients toward safe discharge and renewed independence at home.
Orthopedic Physician Assistant
Built out a new orthopedic line of care across three Middle Tennessee clinics — Lewisburg, Shelbyville, and Lebanon. Day-to-day was a high mix of fracture management, ultrasound-guided injections, sports injuries, and workers' compensation evaluation. Helped onboard and train physician assistants joining the regional orthopedic program, and contributed to Fast Pace's broader orthopedic program build-out.
Orthopedic Physician Assistant
Outpatient orthopedic practice with a heavy injection caseload and a focus on conservative care. Spearheaded the launch of an intra-clinic physical therapy program that achieved the highest referral rate of any clinic in the group — moving more patients toward non-surgical recovery, faster. Supervised orthopedic rotations for PA students.
Spine Surgery & Pain Management
The first chapter of my career — a high-volume, multi-specialty orthopedic and spine practice in Southern California. Surgical first-assist across cervical, thoracic, and lumbar procedures including ACDF, decompression, fusion, and spinal cord stimulator implantation. Managed perioperative care, ran high-acuity spine trauma, and learned thoughtful chronic pain prescribing in a complex patient population. The training ground that shaped how I think about orthopedic and rehabilitation care to this day.
Graduate Training
Master of Science in Physician Assistant Studies (GPA 3.7), with clinical rotations across inpatient, surgical, and ambulatory medicine. B.A. Biology before that at Hamline University (GPA 3.85), Beta Beta Beta biological honor society.
Home first. Then the gym, the trail, a long book, a good kitchen — the steady routines that keep the rest of life working.
Family
Husband and dad. First priority, by a wide margin.
CrossFit & Lifting
Consistency over intensity. The work that keeps everything else working.
Hiking & Travel
Mountain country, always. The heavy expedition years are behind me — the trails are not.
Reading
History, medicine, philosophy, the occasional novel. Usually several going at once.
Cooking
Real food, made slowly, with people I like at the table.
Always Curious
Interested in how things work — systems, bodies, cities, history. The questions are the point.
What I'm focused on.
Growing deeper into PM&R.
Building out the physiatry side of my practice after more than a decade in orthopedics. Different pace, different patients, same standard of care.
Being present.
A young kid changes the math. Most of the time outside of work now belongs to him and my wife — by choice.
Reading widely & staying curious.
A stack of books that somehow keeps growing — history, medicine, philosophy — and the occasional side project worth talking about over coffee.