Saint Francis launched the spine institute in collaboration with a team of Hartford orthopedists and neurosurgeons on March 4. The ultimate aim of the institute is to move towards practicing population management. Population management encourages healthcare providers to look beyond the care given to patients of an individual practice. Instead, health outcomes for an entire area of healthcare are analyzed, as well as how care is delivered. For this, physicians must share their work with each other, and that in turn creates an improved continuum of care for patients, says Dr. Yannopoulos.
Collegial rapport among the physicians, administrative support and a sense of team spirit among all those involved are the three cornerstones of a successful spine institute, according to Dr. Yannopoulos.
1. Collegial rapport. A team of seven surgeons, from both the orthopedic and neurosurgery specialties, provide care at the institute, and six of those seven have worked together for the last 15 years. “We all really feel like we support each other and have each other’s respect,” said Dr. Yannopoulos. The physician leadership must work together, and while physicians may not always agree, they must learn to put their egos aside. He also says the adage, “No man is an island” should be taken to heart among the surgeons and physicians involved in setting up a spine institute. There can’t be any outliers in the group; everyone has to be involved.
2. Administrative support. Another cornerstone of a spine institute is administrative support from the hospital. The administration needs to be involved in the planning and also offer infrastructural support. The Spine Institute of Connecticut uses resources available at Saint Francis, such as the operating rooms and the hospital’s operating room staff for surgeries. For spine institutes in particular, the administration also needs to be willing to make cost-effective investments working with physicians, because the necessary spine technology and instruments, such as state-of-the-art navigation, are expensive, says Dr. Yannopoulos.
3. Team effort and outcomes evaluation. It is important to ensure that everyone involved in setting up a spine institute is on the same page. It can be challenging to bring together surgeons from different practices, but they must act as team players. “It can no longer be acceptable for those involved in a spine institute to say, ‘This is the way I have been doing things and this is the way I will continue to do them,'” says Dr. Yannopoulos. A true team effort becomes all the more important because of the movement toward population management. Integrating the concept of population management into a spine institute involves a careful evaluation of methods and outcomes. Hence, surgeons at the institute have to be open to having their surgical and non-surgical outcomes evaluated. Physicians may feel somewhat uncomfortable when having their work analyzed, but they will “have to be open to candid reviews,” says Dr. Yannopoulos.
Ultimately, these three aspects have to be truly established and integrated into a spine institute for it to be a success and for it to be able to offer outstanding patient care, says Dr. Yannopoulos.
More Articles on Spine Centers:
Saint Francis Hospital Launches Spine Institute
Developing a Successful Spine Center of Excellence
Palomar Pomerado Health Opens Spine Center
