Kevin Plancher, MD, a board-certified orthopedic surgeon at Plancher Orthopaedics & Sports Medicine in New York City, brings a public health approach to his practice.
Dr. Plancher recently received a master's of public health in health policy and management from the Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health in New York City. He spoke with Becker's Spine Review about how healthcare can benefit from seeing the bigger picture.
Question: How does a public health approach inform your clinical practice?
Dr. Kevin Plancher: In my MPH program, all the cases we discussed were hospital-based, which helped me to expand my focus by looking at all aspects of patient care, and that starts and ends with listening to patients. I became more concerned than ever about a business approach to healthcare that looks at volume over value and creates layers of regulation that are managed by non-physicians.
In my own practice, I have tried to maintain a personal connection with each of my patients by ensuring that we work as a team and focus our efforts on understanding the patient as a singular entity while at the same time working on a systems approach within the practice to work efficiently, fairly and toward quality care. As a small example, we don't have a voicemail because I insisted there be a human being on the phone. Making people feel heard stays with them and is good medicine.
Q: How can orthopedists take a 'macro-lens' approach?
KP: A macro approach requires us to work in a model of healthcare collaboration: within our private practices, with other physicians and with the healthcare systems in which we work.
Everything in medicine is in vertical silos, but outside of healthcare, everything is horizontally integrated. As medical practitioners, we need to rely on colleagues for answers to challenging questions, whether they are case- or system-specific, because it shouldn’t be a competition among practitioners. Orthopedists can learn from each other by shifting to group learning in medical education. For example, some of the best centers have orthopedists and neurospine surgeons working together, not separated in that vertical silo.
Even more critical is that we need to do a better job at understanding the social determinants of health to tackle bigger picture issues like the opioid crisis. Finally, working as part of a more cohesive and collaborative network will encourage physicians to get back to empathetic and patient-focused treatment.
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