Deepak Reddy, MD, said staffing will be a challenge for his practice, South Bend (Ind.) Orthopaedics, in 2022.
Dr. Reddy spoke on the "Becker's Healthcare Spine and Orthopedic Podcast" about that challenge and how long he expects it to persist.
This is an edited excerpt. Listen to the full episode here.
Question: What are the top challenges you're anticipating in the next year?
Dr. Deepak Reddy: We're a private practice, and we have the pleasure of working both within big hospital systems as well as small boutique hospitals and a physician-based ASC. We have the ability to practice in multiple realms within the space of orthopedics, and I think there's a couple of occurring challenges that we see that are probably coming down the pipeline, if not already here.
One challenge that a lot of private practice physicians or physicians have seen is staffing. Staffing is probably even a challenge that I think we're gonna have to wrestle with in the first half of 2022, and hopefully it lets up after that. But I think we're continuing to see staffing shortages across all facets of the personnel we need to run the hospital. You can be the best trained spine surgeon in the world taking the best care of yours, but you really need a lot of other people at the hospital to help you do that. From nurses to support staff, to radiology techs, dietary staff and all of these different departments really come together to allow us to do something as complex as spine surgery.
From a COVID-19 perspective from kids being off school to salary differentials, as hospitals are offering bigger salaries for travelers to try to abate their staffing concerns, it sort of creates more and more staffing problems. We've seen this as a trend in the tail end of 2021, and I anticipate that to be the case going forward in 2022.