Philadelphia-based Rothman Orthopaedics is entering a new era with CEO Christian Ellison taking the helm.
Mr. Ellison began his role Oct. 1 and comes to Rothman with experiences from EVP EyeCare, SCA Health and more
He spoke with Becker’s about his plan to keep Rothman a leader in orthopedics and how he’s planning to face the specialty’s biggest challenges.
Note: This conversation was lightly edited.
Question: What are the biggest opportunities that you’ve seen for Rothman when you’re thinking about the upcoming year?
Christian Ellison: The opportunity to support leaders in their field is exciting. As an organization, we want to take all that’s great about Rothman from a teaching perspective, a research perspective and a provision of care perspective, and expand our influence. There are a lot of opportunities to leverage all that Rothman is great at.
Q: To what extent do you see health system partnerships and ASCs affecting that influence and that growth?
CE: ASCs are always going to be a big part of our growth going forward. It’s already a big part of the care delivery model at Rothman, and I think as more orthopedic cases, particularly higher acuity cases, get approved by Medicare for the surgery center, we’re going to want to be providing that care in that setting. From what I understand about Rothman, historically and certainly going forward, is that we want to provide value to the health system from a clinical quality, a patient experience and a cost perspective. ASCs are clearly a vehicle to do that. So we’re going to want to lean into ASC utilization in both our existing markets and new markets.
A big part of what we do is going to continue to be done in hospitals, and I think when we factor in the teaching mission of Rothman, having successful partnerships with hospitals and health systems are important. You also see health systems continuing to develop ambulatory care capabilities. We will collaborate with health systems across care delivery settings and in some cases partner in a more formal way on ambulatory initiatives.
Q: Your past work has included EVP EyeCare, SCA Health and a private orthopedic practice. Are there any lessons that you’ve learned in those that you think will translate well to Rothman?
CE: There are two things that are consistent throughout my career. I’ve always worked in outpatient healthcare and I have always supported and partnered with physicians. I’ve worked in and around orthopedics throughout most of my career starting with my first job at the Anderson Clinic, which has a similar focus to Rothman on teaching and education and quality, value-based care to the community. It’s fun to circle back and work in a similar environment with similar type doctors. The key to being successful as a business person supporting physicians is to work collaboratively. It’s a pretty powerful partnership if you get it right. Physicians are very smart and accomplished people that know their business and what’s important to provide good patient care way better than I ever will. So approach those relationships in a collaborative manner to deliver the best result for your patients, payers, partners, and the group itself. If you work in the proper way with physician partners, you’re going to produce a lot of great results.
Q: I wanted to hone in a bit more on Rothman’s teaching and education. Where do you see the biggest opportunities there?
CE: From a pure practical perspective in terms of the future or prosperity of the group, it is fortunate that we train a lot of doctors, both in residency and fellowship. If you look at the supply and demand imbalance of providers generally in healthcare, it’s not going away and it’s only going to grow. I think training doctors will give us a competitive advantage over time to continue to serve our patients effectively, support our growth and support the mission generally, whether they end up working with us or go out into the world to provide care elsewhere. It’s key to differentiating who Rothman is in the marketplace and in the field of orthopedics, and we want to continue to lean into that.
Q: How is Rothman staying nimble in an increasingly consolidating orthopedic landscape?
CE: Rothman has the same challenges that every other healthcare provider has — declining reimbursement, wage inflation, consolidation, and a shortage of providers. I believe that Rothman as an organization can help sustain the independent practice of medicine. Independent practice is dying. There’s fewer and fewer physician owned practices and Rothman is the largest of those. Rothman has shown great resilience and strength going through COVID-19 and market consolidation and the like, and we are at a scale where I think we can help other groups. A lot of the groups out there are smaller, and there may be opportunities over time to utilize our scale to support them being successful and remaining independent rather than consolidate into some other larger entity.
Q: With CMS reimbursements and private insurers, what are your strategies thinking about access and staying financially afloat?
CE: Access is important both in terms of our mission, as well as providing value to buyers of healthcare services. We only want to improve access, all things being equal. Clearly, you have to be conscious of financial viability. Like all organizations, we’ll be smart about where we invest capital and being disciplined about our expense structure utilizing technology, such as artificial intelligence in an informed way. We’re already a forerunner in terms of how we’re utilizing AI in our operations, and I think we want to continue to play that role in a responsible way.
Q: How have you leveraged AI in your past role?
CE: We were committed to it but were really in the early stages, and I would say Rothman is further ahead in that regard. We were using it mostly in our revenue cycle function and seeing good results. We partnered with an external firm that was working with us through that, and were constantly looking at ways that we could apply it to other non-core functions such as in the back office where we could take administrative tasks away from our providers and the people that are actually delivering care.
Q: How are you thinking about other spine and orthopedic tech investments?
CE: We’ll evaluate things as we go. That’s one of the great things about being part of Rothman — our physicians are some of the forerunners nationally and internationally in developing those technologies along with partners in industry. They’ll guide us in that regard, and we’ll support them by investing and focusing on innovation.
