Kenneth Pettine, MD, is founder of The Spine Institute and Loveland (Colo.) Surgery Center, and founder of the new Society for Ambulatory Spine Surgery.
Q: When will the new Society for Ambulatory Spine Surgery officially launch?
Dr. Kenneth Pettine: We're going to have an off-shoot meeting at the North American Spine Society Annual Meeting in Chicago [in November] and that will be the founding meeting. I envision a two-hour meeting with 5-6 speakers addressing current data on ambulatory spine and the economics of it.
Q: What is the main objective of this new society?
KP: The purpose of the society is to promote outpatient or ASC spine surgery. My goal is to move 50 percent of all of the spine surgery done in the United States to an outpatient setting. It's currently less than 5 percent.
Q: How do you intend to achieve such a significant increase?
KP: To accomplish that is going to require educating surgeons mostly, so that one of the goals of this society is to provide scientific information to prove safety and efficacy of ambulatory spine surgery.
It will also probably require a change in Medicare guidelines. Medicare has guidelines about surgeries that can be done inpatient or outpatient, so those need to change. The fact of the matter is that given the current budget situation and the rather intense scrutiny on Medicare spending, I do believe that these changes will be made over the next few years despite the very strong national presence of the hospital lobby. Hospitals are going to fight this tooth and nails.
Q: Do you think there is evidence to support such a significant migration?
KP: If you look at data, doing surgery at ASCs is safe, efficacious, infection rates are less, complications are less, patient satisfaction is higher and there's tremendous cost savings. Those are all the exact same reasons you would want to move spine surgery to an outpatient setting.
Also, technology has dramatically improved to the point where I think a large percentage of spine surgery can indeed be done outpatient utilizing minimally invasive spine techniques.
Q: Who else will be involved in launching of the society?
KP: While I'm taking the lead, the other doctors that I think will be involved in this from the beginning are Drs. Randall Dryer, Matthew Gornett, Dom Coric, Jim Youssef, William Smith and Dr. Scott Kitchel. These are all other spine surgeons that have ambulatory surgery centers and extensive experience doing surgery in an ASC.
For more information about the Society for Ambulatory Spine Surgery, contact Dr. Pettine at kennethpettine@me.com.
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