The spine landscape is constantly evolving, and William Mitchell, MD, president of the North American Spine Society, aims to keep the organization on the same pace.
Dr. Mitchell was named to the role after NASS’ 2025 meeting in November, and he has been a member for 21 years.
From developments in meeting structure to advocacy, Dr. Mitchell, of Neurological & Spinal Specialists in Marlton, N.J., spoke with Becker’s about his goals in the role.
Note: This conversation was lightly edited.
Question: What are your top priorities in this role?
Dr. William Mitchell: Our top priorities are to help improve value for our NASS members through the different vehicles that we provide. NASS has always been a surgeon-driven society and we will continue to put the focus on surgeons providing comprehensive spine care with the help and expertise of our non-operative providers as an organization.
Q: Can you dive deeper into how you’ll assess value? How are membership interests changing?
WM: We will assess the member value through member satisfaction, member attendance and member engagement. Membership growth with professional organizations is currently an issue for many different organizations. The current landscape involves more physicians being employees instead of private practice affecting organizations to which they belong as well as the number of organizations they belong to. This also changes many of the members’ demands and what they want out of a meeting and out of an organization. What we hear from members is they want the latest technology and innovation. Some of the changes that have happened at annual meetings are going to continue to happen and evolve around the ACCME requirements.
Next year, we are going to reconfigure our meeting to focus on the best content that reflects the membership needs, irrespective of being CME or non-CME content. We will structure the meeting appropriately to comply with the ACCME rules after developing the content. We will still have disclosure and adhere to the conflict of interest rules. However, we will also have more non-CME content and education as well. There will be sessions focused on surgery, but also separate sessions for non-surgeons. Content will drive the meeting, not CME.
Q: Are there any spine innovations in particular that stand out to you?
WM: The latest and most interesting innovation and technologies focus on imaging, image guidance, virtual guidance and computer assisted tools for both surgical and non-surgical procedures. NASS is committed to educating our membership on staying up to date with these technologies. Virtual simulation will likely include neurologic and vascular structures to be included making navigation state of the art for accuracy and safety. That seems to be where most of the interest is, and it is exciting and needs to be provided. Another area of focus is with some of the biologics and regenerative medicine that continue to evolve and change.
Q: How will NASS continue interdisciplinary collaboration with other specialties and subspecialties?
WM: NASS is a surgeon organization focusing on comprehensive spine care. Part of that mission includes non-operative care. Therefore, specialists with expertise in those areas are also members of the organization who supplement the organization and provide that expertise. This is a unique aspect for the organization which we continue to embrace. No other society provides this comprehensive spine care expertise. All aspects of spine care are part of our education program.
Q: What are your advocacy priorities headed into 2026?
WM: NASS has been the leader for many years in health policy with coverage documents and guidelines that are well supported by evidence-based medicine. We provide our members the tools to advocate for themselves. We are advocating for our members, but we believe the most efficacious advocacy is at the local level and not at the federal level. However, NASS advocates on both levels. Our federal advocacy is in collaboration with other like minded stakeholders, e.g. professional medical organizations.
The focus is going to continue, from my perspective, on giving our members the guidelines and coverage policy reviews and letters and documentation that supports quality spine care. A lot of what we do is come up with coverage policies on what should be done, and then members can use that to advocate locally. Some payers use these products as work to develop their own policies, so that’s one avenue. We have been doing that for a long time. But I hope to put more focus on tools physicians can use to help make their case for treatment for their patients. On a national level, preauthorization continues to be an issue for everybody, and we will continue to collaborate with other societies. We can be more effective collectively within NASS and in collaboration with other societies.
Q: What do you think will be the biggest disruptors in 2026 for spine surgeons, and how should they prepare for that?
WM: The biggest disruptor for spinal surgery is that numerous surgical procedures are now being requested and performed by interventionalists. NASS represents high quality comprehensive care. We advocate for our members working together for the patient benefit, which often means not holding on to patients, but getting them to a provider with surgical training. As for technology, innovations to do less invasive surgical procedures before the patient gets to the spine surgeon is going to continue to disrupt the field.
