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Hello, and welcome to the Becker's Healthcare podcast.
My name is Chanel Bonger. Today, I am
recording live at the twenty second annual Spine
Orthopedic and Pain Management Driven ASC
plus the Future of Spine Conference and sitting
down with doctor Scott Hannum, partner at Emerge
Ortho and president medical director at Brunswick Surgery
Center. Doctor Hannum, thank you so much for
joining me. Well, thank you for having me
today. Perfect. Well, to get us started out,
can you please introduce yourself and tell us
a bit about your background and organizations?
So I am a total joint orthopedic surgeon
by training.
This is my
twenty seventh year in practice, which is hard
to imagine.
I am a partner at Emerge Orthopedics. Emerge
Orthopedics is a large independent
orthopedic super group in, North Carolina.
We've been in existence, I think, about eight
years now, and basically, it was a collective
of,
multiple different independent orthopedic groups in the state
of North Carolina and Wilmington, North Carolina where
I'm at, and then Raleigh, North Carolina, Winston
Salem, Greensboro, Asheville,
All came they came together to form that
large independent orthopedic practice.
Eight years ago, we started our own independent,
physician owned surgery center,
in Wilmington
that, opened the door six years ago,
right in the midst of COVID, which was
perfect timing on our part,
for a lot of chaos. But we were
successful and we made it through. And,
now we do,
about 4,500
surgeries a year and four operating rooms and
very busy, very successful.
So, I,
have taken over the role and administrator
and medical director of that facility in addition
to my patient care duties.
Got it. Got it. Well, now moving into
the meat of the podcast a bit, can
you talk about three top trends that you're
watching today in health care and ASCs today
in your role?
Well, I think and again, I'm sure you've
already had people comment on this. But, you
know, the trend in orthopedics
specifically
and COVID was
a a catalyst
because we couldn't do surgery in the hospitals.
But the trend
of moving the majority
of orthopedic
surgeries to an outpatient setting was already happening,
and then, again, COVID accelerated it. And so
we're definitely seeing that. There's no question that
we can safely and successfully
do
seventy, eighty percent
of most, if not all, orthopedic surgeries at
ASC.
And so that's a good and a bad
problem. It's a good for patients. Patient care
is better.
The outcomes are better. The risk of infections
are lower.
But
we don't have the facilities to do that
many surgeries.
And there's a lot of regulations
in many states in the country about opening
ASCs,
who can own them, how fast you can
build them, etcetera. And so there's a there's
a an access issue,
which is
a good and a bad thing for ASCs.
So that's one huge trend is the increasing
numbers in orthopedist
pedic cases that have to be done.
I think, you know, there's there's the the
marketplace of it. The the federal government, unfortunately,
does not reimburse surgeries to be done at
an ASC at the same rate that they
do at a hospital or even an outpatient
hospital setting, which is inappropriate.
It's the same surgery. It's the same care.
If anything, we're more efficient and we're cheaper,
with better outcomes. And so
that is a huge
lobbying
effort that has to be done on the
national level, which is not easy.
So that's that is a threat and an
issue that's influencing the economics of ASCs,
most definitely.
Got it. Got it. And going into the
second half of twenty twenty five, what are
you most focused on and excited about?
Well, I think, you know, again, we talked
about, you know, what's happening in the trends,
and and it's it's exciting. It's a challenge.
You know? How do we how do we
overcome the access issue? How do we,
enable patients to have their surgery at an
outpatient facility? I could be more efficient and
be more cost effective in order to do
that. So that's an exciting thing.
I think technology is always fun. That's a
fun trend.
You know,
again, everybody wants to talk about AI and
what is AI doing. And and 90% of
people don't even know what it is, but
they wanna talk about it.
But it's a reality, and it's changing. We're
seeing it incrementally
in our in our, way we document cases,
the way we do,
patient visits, the way we do operative notes,
little AI programs that we're using for,
billing and collection and keep listening and all
that.
All that. Yeah. All the above. And then
even just the technology that we have with
the surgery, you know, with robotic surgery and
other things, that's very exciting. It's very fun,
you know, to see where that goes and
how that can,
make us even more efficient and and
improve I think it will improve
health care economics. So we can figure out
how to do it correctly
with the right vendors and the right smart
people writing a good software. We can
we can be more efficient
and deliver better care to patients.
A lot of cautious optimism?
I think so. Yeah. Got it. And,
I really enjoyed our time today. But before
I let you go, I have one more
question. How are you thinking about growth over
the next year or so at your organizations?
Well, we are a big proponent of independent
medical practices.
So Emerge Ortho
is probably the sixth or seventh largest independent
orthopedic practice in the in the country.
But
even that is not enough. So
our biggest driver is how do we partner
with other like minded independent orthopedic groups around
the country.
So we have
a a, an organization called PELTO, which is
a conglomerate of
many different independent orthopedic groups from the West
Coast, from the Midwest,
Northeast, and then also North Carolina.
How do we come together to maintain independent
practices,
like minded
care of patients,
collectively
improve the,
contracts that we have with payers,
contracts we have with suppliers,
provide better health care coverage for our employees
and benefits for our employees.
And so in order to stay competitive
and to kinda
deal with the rapid changes in health care
economics, we feel that that's very important.
That's a different model than being owned by
a health care system or being owned by
a a university
system, which
has benefits, but also has a lot of
red tape and a lot of complexities.
So so that's our biggest
growth driver in the next three to five
years is how do we make that work
and expand that hopefully nationwide.
Absolutely. Well, doctor Hanum, I wanna thank you
once again for your time today and for
joining me on the Becker's Healthcare podcast. Well,
thank you for having me very much.