Patrick Hsieh, MD, discusses investments in technology at USC Spine Center.
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Question: What are some technology-based investments you are making to improve your practice?
Patrick Hsieh, MD, Director, Minimally Invasive Spine Program, USC Spine Center, Keck Medicine of USC, Los Angeles: At the USC Spine Center, which is part of Keck Medicine of USC in Los Angeles, we've focused much of our investments on technologies related to improving patient outcomes and safety in spine care in and out of the operating room.
As part of a major overhaul of our electronic medical record and database management, we are developing web-based and tablet-based patient outcome surveys that are embedded in the patients' medical record. The system will allow us to track patient outcomes seamlessly throughout the entire treatment course, including both non-operative and operative treatments. The clinical outcome database will not only be important for our clinical trials and research endeavors; it will also be extremely valuable to provide insights to the outcomes of our interventions in a prospective manner to our patients, referring physicians and payers.
In the operative suite, we have invested in intraoperative imaging and navigation technologies that have improved our capabilities in minimally invasive spine, spinal deformity, spine tumor and revision spine surgeries while significantly reducing our complication rate. Since the introduction of intraoperative 3-D imaging and image-guided spine surgery at USC, we've completely eliminated our unplanned reoperations related to spinal implant malpositioning.
At USC, we truly believe that patient outcomes and patient safety come first and we are making significant strides to be the best and safest spine center around.
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