Katie Vadasdi, MD, and David Hergan, MD, Spire Orthopedics Partners’ chief medical officers, who were named to their roles in September, say they want to deepen collaboration with other physicians and across the MSO.
Drs. Vadasdi and Hergan spoke with Becker’s about their new roles with Spire and their goals for the organization.
Note: This conversation was edited for clarity.
Question: I’d love to hear about your history with Spire. What are you hoping to expand on in your new roles?
Dr. David Hergan: Spire has always focused on physicians retaining control of clinical autonomy. Dr. Vadasdi and I are extremely focused on supporting Spire physicians in the field, while allowing the MSO to direct the nonclinical functions of the business to drive efficiency and scale. Each Spire practice has created a Clinical Governance Board of local physicians to lead clinical decision making. With Spire’s growth over time, it became clear that a physician voice on the executive leadership team would also be beneficial to the organization. We credit our CEO, Chris Fusco, with creating our formal chief medical officer positions.
Q: Dr. Vadasdi I’d love to hear your perspective. What are some of the top priorities and challenges facing physicians with Spire?
Dr. Katie Vadasdi: One of our key challenges is unifying all Spire practices and physicians across the platform into a cohesive, collaborative medical team that effectively partners with our non-clinical business functions to drive growth — while upholding the highest standards of clinical care and patient experience.
Dr. Hergan and I want to support all our physicians and make sure that they can focus on providing the care that they’ve been trained to give, which is ultimately of paramount importance.
Q: Taking an overhead view, how are you strategizing for the biggest clinical and operational challenges ahead?
KV: I believe one of our ongoing challenges is ensuring that physicians can focus on patient care, even as administrative responsibilities — like documentation, billing, and regulatory requirements — continue to grow. These are areas where Dr. Hergan and I can add real value behind the scenes by helping to develop streamlined processes and invest in tools that allow our physicians to spend more time where it matters most: with patients
DH: I think consolidation is inevitable now in our field, and there’s pressure from wage inflation and declining reimbursements, which are big challenges. We’re focused on helping to create value for our groups and maintaining a private practice that can thrive well into the future and for generations to come. Our platform supports the individual practices with a long-term vision in mind. We are big enough to leverage our scale to optimize efficiencies but nimble enough to innovate and adjust to changing markets and policies.
Q: How are you maintaining culture and keeping everyone aligned?
KV: Ultimately, it all comes back to our shared mission: delivering the highest quality care to every patient. That commitment is what unites the physicians and surgeons across Spire and serves as the foundation of our culture and alignment. While our practices serve different communities, we are connected through Spire Orthopedic Partners and the confidence that the Spire platform is here to support us in that mission.
DH: A lot of the alignment at Spire also comes from the fact that we’re a majority physician owned platform. Off the bat, everyone is rowing the boat in the same direction. We’ve been strategic and purposeful about who is brought on to our team. We want excellence in physician capability and team players. We prioritize access to care, serving our communities and bringing on the strongest physicians in each subspecialty.
I’m part of a practice association co-founded by Spire called the Connecticut Independent Physician Practice Association which was formed to support physicians in private practice. We believe in maintaining the private practice model as a means of providing improved access for patients, keeping health-care costs down, and optimizing physician job satisfaction; all leading to better patient care.
KV: Another way we support alignment is our growth model. We have been disciplined in terms of the criteria we use to evaluate new practices to join the Spire partnership. First is the quality of the physicians, and then second is that we’re geographically clustered. By concentrating in regions like New England and New York, we maintain close proximity across our network, which fosters stronger collaboration. This geographic alignment allows Dr. Hergan and me to be physically present across our practices, strengthening relationships and integration. As a result, we have built a true partnership through the Spire platform that has been highly effective.
