Dr. Kim, of San Diego-based Excel Spine, joined the “Becker’s Healthcare Podcast” to discuss what the ASC landscape will look like for spine surgery.
Note: This is an edited excerpt. Listen to the full conversation here.
Question: ASC volume is expected to increase by 16% all across the country by 2032. With this growth, what is the most pressing challenge to maintaining a positive patient care experience?
Dr. Choll Kim: So that percent increase is probably for all ASC surgeries. But I think for spine surgeries we do about 300,000 lumbar fusions per year, and a significant majority of those are just simple one- and two-level fusions. Then we do well over half a million non-fusion spine procedures, and right now most of those are still done in the hospital even though they really don’t need to be. The likelihood of a big change within the spine field is going to be much more dramatic than the overall group.
The same thing will be for total joints, but I think the anticipated growth has to take that into account where it’s not just the general growth, but there’s going to be some areas where they’re going to grow a lot faster.
For me the question is: Are we just trying to recreate a hospital that does a lot of different specialties as an outpatient setting? Or should we be more like a highly specialized, consistent, efficient system? Personally, I would like to see surgery centers that only specialize in spine surgery or just two or three sub specialties. Having multiple different specialties makes the growth of an ASC not as meaningful compared to if we use this opportunity to really sub-specialize. I hope it’s not just about the growth, but about a fundamental change in the way we deliver healthcare.
