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Welcome everyone to the Becker's Healthcare podcast series.
I'm Mariah Muhammad, writer and moderator with Becker's
Healthcare. Our folks I have with me today,
doctor Dan Buckholter,
orthopedic surgeon at Summers Orthopedic Surgery and Sports
Medicine Group. Doctor, welcome to the podcast for
the very first time. We're very excited to
have you join us today. To get us
started, would you mind please introducing yourself and
telling us a bit about your background? Sure.
Hi. Thank you, very much for having me.
So, yeah, my name is Daniel Bauchalter. I
am a recent,
joint replacement fellow graduate from the hospital for
special surgery. I did my, my residency training
at NYU, so most of my orthopedic training
was in the city. And I just, moved
up to,
the suburbs. I live in Westchester now, and
I cover,
the orthopedic patients in kind of Connecticut, Westchester,
and some of the neighboring counties. So thanks
for having me.
Yeah. Yeah. Of course. And I love that
we're we were kinda close to each other.
I now live in, Brooklyn. And so,
New Yorkers on the podcast today.
So what are some of the biggest headwinds
you're planning for this year?
So, yes, 1st year in practice, so very
exciting. Right now learning a new EMR, which
believe it or not is more difficult than,
than doing orthopedics. So that is, the biggest
challenge I have at this time. But headwinds
wise, like, what am I interested in? What
what do I see myself doing over the
next year more or less is,
is kind of getting more technology into,
the orthopedic community that I serve. So I'm,
covering
ER call and actually,
I have privileges at a bunch of hospitals
in the area. And a lot of them
have technology, but they kind of jumped on
the bandwagon early and have not really updated
themselves
since. So, I am excited to kind of
bring all the things that I learned and
all the things that I'm working on,
from a technology perspective and also,
to bring a little bit of a a
research kind of arm to the practice that
I'm joining to to help accelerate
our productivity and and the way that we
take care of patients.
Yeah. Yeah. That completely makes sense.
And
in your opinion, I know a lot of
things, you know, a lot of moving parts
right now in your field.
How will the spine and orthopedic field evolve
in the next 2 to 3 years, do
you think? Whether it's involving tech or the
workforce or anything like that.
Yes. That's a that's a great question. Right?
So I joined a practice,
that was recently,
partnered with a, private equity firm called Health
Plus Management. And, it's funny because when I
was starting practice, a lot of my mentors
from, my training were, like, careful with with,
private equity. They might direct the way that
you take care of patients. And so,
private equity. They might direct the way that
you take care of patients.
And so we're kind of giving me a
lot of warnings and actually believe it or
not, it's been an incredible experience. They've been
incredibly supportive. I have,
more autonomy than I've ever had. Not just
because I'm now an attending, but also because
the private practice model that I've joined is
is still very much a private practice model
just with the support,
of a private equity firm that sort of
allows us to continue to expand and continue
to offer kind of the latest and greatest
to our patients without being nervous that we're
gonna break the bank of a smaller private
practice group. So, in that respect, it's been,
it's been great. And I think that orthopedics
and spine surgery are kind of going a
little bit in that direction in that,
the smaller practices obviously are having difficult times
become staying independent because reimbursements are decreasing and
the smaller practices are having difficult time arguing
with insurance companies that they're providing equal care
as the larger, you know, organizations
and,
and so aren't being compensated as well as
a larger organization. So a lot of roll
ups are happening and the roll ups are
continuing to happen. And what's interesting, I think,
is that the roll ups, at least in
this past few months that I've started appear
to be less like you go somewhere and
they tell you what to do. It's more
like you go partner with somebody, whether it's
a a major academic institution or, again, a
private equity firm or otherwise.
And they they leverage kind of your knowledge
and you leverage their,
their power with negotiations and with, with the
big bank account basically that they have and,
and are and are able to, again, like
I said, kinda continue direct the, the direction
of, of orthopedic care in your area. So
it's actually pretty exciting and it's it's less
nerve wrecking than I kind of was set
up,
to be expect to expect sort of. So
I've spoken to some of my mentors since,
and and they're, they're encouraged by what I've
seen so far. So, I think things are
moving in in a good direction, and we'll
just, gotta keep a finger on the pulse.
Yeah. Yeah. Definitely sounds like it. Thank you
so much for sharing that. And, doctor, before
I let you go, the last thing that
we're going to ask you is, where do
you see the best opportunities for growth?
Sure. So that is that's actually exciting. So
I I've, I've got, you know, like I
said, a lot of experience with kind of
the cutting edge tech and, and implant technology
as it relates to robotics, but also, implant
design and and all the sort of technologies
that we're trying to,
put into our implants to make them last
longer and to and to have better outcomes
for our patients. So I think as everybody's
always talking about one of the most exciting
things right now in orthopedics and otherwise and
and all sorts of tech is the use
of of of computer intelligence more or less
to help us understand
the best way to take care of each
individual patient. So, historically, right, you can do
a knee replacement and you try to accomplish
the same exact thing for every single patient.
We're definitely becoming much more specific in the
way that we treat different sorts of pathologies
and different sorts of balancing and different sorts
of, deformities and leg length discrepancies and all
these sort of things. And leveraging all the
big data that we've been collecting for all
these years, but not necessarily knowing how to,
to analyze it. The I think computer intelligence,
artificial intelligence specifically will really help us kinda
delve into that data that we have and
give individualized care to each and each and
every patient. I know a lot of the
big companies are currently working on this and
looking at that sort of data and looking
at the way that they can incorporate artificial
intelligence,
into the treatment of patients. But I am
very excited, and I think I think the
biggest opportunities for growth, in orthopedics are are
the leveraging of of that sort of very
powerful computing technology.
Yeah. Yeah. That completely makes a lot of
sense. Thank you so much for sharing,
those things, and thank you for those final
thoughts. It's definitely been very informative discussion. So,
again, I wanna thank you so much for
coming on Becker's HealthCare,
and I hope you have a great time.
I look forward to connect connecting with you
again soon. Yeah. Thank you so much for
having me. I really appreciate the opportunity to
speak.