In some healthcare settings, physicians are incentivized to squeeze as many patients into their days as possible, but care can suffer under that model.
Thomas Schuler, MD, founder and CEO of the Virginia Spine Institute in Reston, joined "Becker's ASC Review Podcast" to talk about how surgeons can improve care by going the extra mile.
Note: This is an edited excerpt. Listen to the full podcast episode here.
Question: What have you done to make sure you're meeting patients' needs and preferences when they seek out care?
Dr. Thomas Schuler: Meeting the patients where they are is such an important part. Our practice is very atypical. We're a concierge out-of-network practice, and people come to us because they want time with their physicians. We don't treat X-rays, we don't treat MRIs. We treat people.
By having time with people, we can find out what needs they have in their life. Is it just a spine need or are there other factors that need to be addressed?
We only operate on 5 to 10 percent of our patients. So most of our patients are successfully treated nonoperatively. All of our surgeons are experts in nonoperative care; that way we understand how to get people better without surgery. And even if we do surgery, what other treatments need to be piggybacked on to get them a full and complete recovery?
It's not OK to look at an MRI and say, "I took out that disc herniation, or I fused that fracture or that unstable level," but to say, "[Did] I truly return this patient to a full and active life?"
That means that the surgeons have to be intimately involved with the diagnosis, the management, the recovery and the nonoperative treatment. That's very atypical to have a practice with surgeons so focused on the nonoperative care. I think that's one of the reasons that we've been so successful and continue to thrive.