Jeff Gittins, DO, believes outpatient orthopedics will be the next major growth opportunity in the industry.
Dr. Gittins, of OrthoNeuro in New Albany, Ohio, spoke on the "Becker's Healthcare Spine and Orthopedic Podcast" about his outlook and how his practice's ASC is contributing to that space.
This is an edited excerpt. Listen to the full episode here.
Question: What are some of the big growth opportunities going forward?
Dr. Jeff Gittins: Growth from orthopedics is still going to be pushed to the outpatient setting. What we found out with COVID-19 is it pushed a lot of things to the outpatient setting. There are many hospital systems that were saying that they could not do elective overnight cases, and that forced a lot of surgeons, a lot of patients to take another look at doing outpatient surgical cases. So I think the next boom is going to be in the outpatient setting doing total joint replacements, spine surgery and most orthopedic procedures.
Q: Are you currently able to do some of your more complex spine and total joint replacements in the ASC that you have?
JG: In our surgery center, we're still doing outpatient total joint replacements. Most of them go home the same day. We have the ability to do hold 'em overnight, but most of our patients are going home the same day. For spine surgery, we're not doing as complex of cases. That is still on horizon, and we're trying to make sure we're taking safe care of our patients and [determining] what our surgeons are comfortable with. That is a possibility.