'It's already evolved': Dr. Kern Singh on outpatient spine surgery

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Outpatient spine surgery already has a strong foothold, and it provides surgeons with autonomy, according to Kern Singh, MD, co-director of Minimally Invasive Spine Institute at Midwest Orthopaedics at Rush in Chicago.

He spoke on the "Becker's Spine and Orthopedic Podcast" about spine surgery's future in the outpatient setting.

This is an excerpt. Listen to the full podcast here.

Question: How do you see outpatient spine evolving over the next few years?

Dr. Kern Singh: That's the hot question, and I always answer it by saying it's already evolved. If you're not doing outpatient spine surgery right now, you're behind, and if you're doing it now, you're behind in five years. The evolution of it is only beneficial for the patient and the healthcare system alone. Delivering cost-efficient care, high quality care and high quality outcomes for patients is here, and I think what it's done is it changed the playing field.

It's allowed surgeons to continue to maintain their autonomy independent from large healthcare systems or hospitals. Acquisitions allow them to deliver the care to the patients that are demanding a higher level of service, a higher level of return to function.

So how does it evolve? I think that the market share is still very small, but I think it's continuing to grow. It's dominated by so many market pressures that it's inevitable. At the end of the day, what it really does do, no matter how much it changes, it places the surgeon back in command. They're the gatekeeper to the patient, and I think it allows them to continue in an autonomous fashion where they can continue to deliver high quality care that they can control. I think that's the most important. I think that oftentimes the challenges we face in healthcare as physicians and clinician extenders, is that we may be dictated often about what we can do or can't do in large healthcare systems.

 

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