Moving spine cases to the ASC takes time, and hospitals and health systems need to strategize to get on the ground floor, said April Ernst, chief operating officer at Orlando Health Jewett Orthopedic Institute.
Ms. Ernst joined the "Becker's Spine and Orthopedic Podcast" to discuss outpatient spine strategy for hospitals and what's next for robotics.
Note: This is an edited excerpt. Listen to the full conversation here.
Q: How do you see the field of spine and orthopedics evolving over the next two to three years?
AE: I think that what we're seeing is the continued push to the outpatient setting. So [we're] really planning for that and it takes a good three years to plan for facilities that can take care of patients in the outpatient setting.
You have to start your strategic planning three to five years in advance, [and] you have to be looking towards the future at all times and be willing to adjust as needed in order to solve for that patient population. Ensuring that you have enough outpatient settings for patients to receive care, ambulatory surgical centers are a must. Not only is it good for patients, it provides care at a lower cost. These are things that are important to patients [and] important to payers. We really are focusing on how we can get in front of that complete shift and flip towards providing care in an ambulatory setting.
The use of robotic systems technology is also advancing so rapidly that you have to be able to look ahead and determine what types of technology is going to be most beneficial to your practice, to your surgeons, and get ahead of that … Form partnerships with industry that are no longer adversarial, but beneficial. I think there's that natural tension that's created between industry partners and providers. What we've done is actually turned that into a relationship. We have some great industry partners that we're at the table with every month, and we are working to solve these advancements in technology together [and] we're part of their solution. I think that that is something that is very important that orthopedics and spine care providers are at the table when new technology is being created.
We are also seeing some talk about 3D printing. We have a 3D printer in our facility that we've been able to use to create certain anatomy and have our physicians use that and determine what, what their best approach to surgery is going to be. It's their anatomy that we're able to print, and our surgeons can potentially practice their case before, before actually performing it on, on their patients. We're seeing augmented and virtual reality. That is something that is consistently used in our practice and our surgical cases, and this is really being embraced by our team. AI can, can be scary, right? What does AI really mean? How do you really want to use AI in the future? We know it's here. So we're looking at that. We have incorporated telemedicine into our practices, probably similar to many others out there, but this is just providing convenient care for our patients in their home environment, reducing the burden on them to have to come in for a clinic visit. Transportation can be a challenge for a lot of patients. So how can we meet our patients where they are and provide the best care to them, using technology that we have at our fingertips?