Alejandro Badia, MD, is a board-certified hand and upper extremity orthopedic surgeon. He is also the founder and CMO of Badia Hand to Shoulder Center and OrthoNow, both based in Doral, Fla.
Dr. Badia recently spoke with Becker’s Spine Review about orthopedic urgent care, consumerism in healthcare and orthopedic mobile applications.
Question:How has OrthoNow taken inspiration from the retail and commercial sectors to transform care delivery?
Dr. Alejandro Badia: We recognized many years ago that there was a major consumer health revolution going on because the traditional entities haven't stepped up to the fact that our healthcare costs are approaching 20 percent of our gross national product in the U.S. In creating OrthoNow, [I] observed that traditional retail and commercial sectors were rapidly transforming by improving access to services, largely through digital technology and simplifying access to goods. We have done the same by placing clinical centers amongst retail stores in highly visible and accessible facilities, including easy parking and along major thoroughfares. This is very unlike traditional physicians' offices or large hospitals.
Furthermore, we made access nearly instantaneous with our app, where the patient can learn where the nearest orthopedic center is located, estimate travel time from their current location, send a relevant photo of their injury and even call an Uber all within one app. Reaching an orthopedic clinician has also been simplified via telemedicine, where our website or the app can be used to receive immediate, albeit remote, attention if proximity or time is an issue.
We saw the increasing consumerization of medicine and have not only embraced it, but we have led the charge in certain areas of immediate orthopedic and injury care. The traditional institutions are large and expensive, and many times offer tremendous quality, in particular for complex clinical scenarios. However, these are not the best places to seek treatment for many issues, such as sinusitis or back pain. The former issue is well managed in 'general' urgent care centers, which are fast, convenient and typically in convenient locations. However, it soon became clear that for certain specialties in medicine that 'general' urgent care centers in the patient journey actually added costs to healthcare and delayed time to the appropriate treatment. In these cases, the patient with back pain was being seen by a family practice or ER doctor who doesn't have the training to work up an evaluation and diagnosis of back pain that could be productive for the patient. Therefore, orthopedic urgent care centers came on the scene over a decade ago.
We realized that orthopedic urgent care should be a national network because insurance companies and even healthcare systems have become national for a variety of good reasons and clinicians haven't stepped up and done the same. Therefore, we are fragmented. OrthoNow is meant to be a turn key orthopedic walk-in center with a variety of entities, including orthopedic providers who would rather not reinvent the wheel or a healthcare system that realizes that the downstream revenue from an orthopedic walk-in center, namely surgical referrals, are the key to staying above the competition. At this time, patients demand convenience and good access, and that's what OrthoNow has tried to do and will be even more successful if allowed to do this with larger systems with whom we can have joint ventures.
Q: What can orthopedic practices learn from the launch of OrthoNow's mobile application?
AB: Orthopedic practices can learn that mobile technologies are what the younger generation is now demanding for a variety of services. For example, to call for a car for transportation or to have food delivered to their home, even uncooked. The bottom line is that patients are demanding easier access to clinical services, and the time has come that this will be done in a variety of subspecialties, with orthopedics perhaps being the most natural to adopt mobile applications. This is because there are many urgent orthopedic issues, but most are not emergencies, with the exception of fractures. Therefore, patients with aches and pains, minor sprains and lessor factures can use a mobile app like the one from OrthoNow to easily and quickly find a location and even call right from our app for an Uber to take them there.
Q: How can the adoption of mobile applications facilitate the shift from hospital to outpatient orthopedic surgical care?
AB: Mobile apps will shift care from the hospital to outpatient care because they are much more responsive to patient needs and because they are predicated on speed and efficiency, which in many cases is the opposite of what a patient experiences in a hospital and in an ER. Outpatient surgery is in most cases meant for less complex surgeries where patients don't need hospitalization, so the mobile app that can direct a patient to an orthopedic urgent facility and can even deliver them by car is something a hospital can't do because it isn't in line with their basic methodology.