Halfway through the year, four spine surgeons reflect on what's gone well for them in 2024 and what's ahead.
Ask Spine Surgeons is a weekly series of questions posed to spine surgeons around the country about clinical, business and policy issues affecting spine care. Becker's invites all spine surgeon and specialist responses.
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Please send responses to Carly Behm at cbehm@beckershealthcare.com by 5 p.m. CST Tuesday, July 2.
Editor's note: Responses were lightly edited for clarity and length.
Question: Halfway through the year, what's one accomplishment you're proud of and what's a goal you have for the remainder of 2024?
Jeffrey Carlson, MD. Orthopaedic & Spine Center (Newport News, Va.): As there are many forces against private practice right now, I am happy that our practice has been able to increase our reach to our community. Patients have been drawn to the personalized service and care that large systems are not able to provide. We continue to see private practice as the most patient-centric method to provide care. As long as patients are receiving great service and a successful resolution to their orthopedic and spinal issue, I believe they will want to come here for treatment. Our goal is to increase our services over the next year and expand our reach. Great service leads to financial success that we will then put into growing the practice to make it more successful. We are committed to the private practice model for the foreseeable future.
Brian Gantwerker, MD. The Craniospinal Center of Los Angeles: My favorite accomplishment is doing more endoscopic work. As I bring more cases in, I am finding more confidence, and also know when it's just not good to do. I had a recent case I was contemplating doing endoscopically, but ended up starting and finishing through an MIS approach. The fragment was so stuck to the dura and had to be carefully manipulated I do not think it would have been appropriate and I am so glad I didn't. My goal for the remainder of 2024 is to do more minimally invasive surgery and to expand my online presence and enjoy time with my wife, son and soon-to-be-born niece. My other goals are to keep grinding on with my practice and my bicycling — one pays the bills, the other keeps me sane. We all need both.
Kushagra Verma, MD. DISC Sports & Spine Center's Marina del Rey (Calif.) ASC: Halfway through this year, I think perhaps my biggest accomplishment is innovation within the field of minimally invasive surgery. More and more, we're finding that we are able to take care of routine single- and two-level pathologies in the lumbar spine with an all-minimally invasive approach. Many of these surgeries are done in an ambulatory care center, and patients can avoid the hospital setting entirely.
Also, we're better able to predict where patients will have issues after traditional spine surgery. Whether it's a non-union or a flat back or adjacent segment disease, we can anticipate these problems and do surgery in a way so that the incidence of a non-union or a flat back is virtually zero, and even if there's a problem at the adjacent level in the future, these can be largely managed with an all-minimally invasive approach.
Being an expert in both minimally invasive lateral approaches and collaborating with vascular surgeons to take on a minimally invasive anterior approach are skills that allow for spine surgery to improve dramatically compared to previous years.
Another accomplishment that I'm very proud of is a greater focus on collaboration among spine surgeons. In this changing healthcare environment, I feel it's critical for spine surgeons to befriend each other, work together and look for ways to both innovate within our specialty and work together to protect our specialty from ongoing reductions in reimbursement. I'm excited for the future and am happy to have made these changes in our practice.
Earlier this year, I became a physician partner at DISC, which has worked to innovate in the outpatient setting and improve the healthcare environment for spine surgeons in an ambulatory care setting.
Christian Zimmerman, MD. St. Alphonsus Medical Group and SAHS Neuroscience Institute (Boise, Idaho): A leadership transition within our hospital system created its expected dyspepsia among the level-two positions and was strangely communicated as 'financial changes' would be wontedly based on the incoming regime.
Fortunately for the entire staff and surgeons alike, the experienced successor with both familial and community ties was home office selected, having to forego the six-to-twelve-month awkward resettling period. Continuing the current path of pandemic staff reparation and physician burn-out will remain top of mind, including expansion and growth at the neuroscience/surgery disciplines. An organized physician/surgeon-based concernment and communication within the parent organization was melded into the forward-thinking decision process.
Assisting in this process quelled fears but also allowed our Trustee Board to refamiliarize themselves with a renewed focus on continued success and allow adjunct administration the renewed impetus to maintain progression in their respective departments.