This is Carly Beam with the Becker Spine
and Orthopedics podcast,
and I'm thrilled to be joined today by
doctor Matthew Dietz, chair of orthopedics at West
Virginia University School of Medicine.
Doctor Dietz, thank you so much for joining
us today.
Carly, thanks for having me. So before we
dive into our conversation, I'd love if you
could, you know, share a bit about your
background, how you got to where you are
now.
Sure. I'm Matt Dietz. I'm an orthopedic surgeon
and, privileged to be the chair of orthopedics
here at WVU.
My clinical work focuses on hip and knee
replacement in the complex revision
revision surgeries.
You know, I I'm a clinician scientist in
my background.
My research interest focus around prosthetic joint infection,
biofilm,
and how cellular pathways really influence our recovery
after surgery.
Nationally and internationally, I'm working on trying to
improve
translational science around prosthetic joint infection and how
we're taking care of these really challenging patients.
I also work,
with academic medicine to try and,
responsibly,
generate,
industry partnerships that really enhance our ability to
bring technology to our patients.
Excellent. I can't wait to dive in more
into what you're doing in your research work,
but I want to start on you started,
as chair of Orthopedics during a time of
real rapid growth at WVU.
And I'd love to hear just kind of
your first priorities in aligning clinical expansion, but
then also, you know, this research mission that
you've been talking about.
Yeah. I think whenever we're talking about growth,
I think really
meaningful growth
only happens if it helps strengthen your underlying
mission. And even though I've been a part
of the department for greater than twenty years
and seen it grown under steady leadership from
six faculty to the 48 faculty that we
have today,
And I thought it was really important to
to sit down and listen,
to our team members. And so, you know,
in those first few weeks,
as I took over as chair, I held
over a 125
interviews with everyone from our frontline staff at
the front desk to our most senior faculty,
trying to really identify what we should keep
doing and protect, you know, what we could
grow or scale at the system level. And
then maybe what we could stop doing, what
was getting in the way. And I think
when we focused on that, you know, one
of the things I I I realized and
I think I've known all along
is that really our best asset isn't our,
you know, newest technologies or the newest AI.
It's it's the people who show up every
day to provide this great care, for our
patients in the state of West Virginia.
Yeah. Absolutely. And, I mean, in a lot
of my other conversations I've had with spine
and orthopedic surgeons, especially when it does come
to technology and AI, so is that human
aspect that really comes forefront that really matters
the most in terms of how effective some
a tool
really is.
And I was wondering, you know, were there
were there any,
interesting takeaways, any interesting shifts that you've
made,
from these conversations, these,
more than 100 some
conversations you had when you started? Well, it's
amazing the recurring themes that you see where
people aren't always overburned by the amount of
work. They just wanna take away those roadblocks
so they can continue to provide great care.
And so however we can enable that,
and a lot of times, that's just identifying
a system that makes things routine for people
so they can continue to do the work
to prevent things like burnout.
And I think those were
how we can address that and streamline processes
for people, make it easier for them to
do their job.
Yeah. And, you know, when you're thinking about
the or the orthopedic department, can you talk
about these ideas and how you're striking that
balance between
protecting your own time for research and education,
but then also
meeting all the different demands of your day
to day practice and clinical work all around?
Yeah. I mean, it it's tough. And I'll
tell you that I'm always trying to find
a better answer.
I think whenever I talk to our students
and our residents, I think this idea of
work life balance,
can become a real challenge.
And then when you're trying to protect time
for research and education, I think that if
you if you have the idea of balance,
you're always failing someone. And so I think
it's,
more practical to think of sort of, intentional
priority management in terms of what are you
focusing on right now. And I think that's
really important so that just like I protect
my OR time, I also have to protect
that research time, that the meetings start on
time and that and that they're focused,
and that they provide meaningful results.
I think the other piece is that making
sure that you have depth in leadership. I
think that if if I'm the bottleneck, if
I'm the only one able to make decisions,
then I think that, I become a real
limiting factor for the growth of the department.
And so I think that's how you protect.
You know, we have great leaders on the
educational side in terms of, you know, managing
the day to day with our residency program.
And I think that's critically important as we're
looking to try and grow as a program.
Yeah. And then you're kind of focusing
specifically on your research. What have been some
most interesting findings that you've
been looking into?
Well, I think one of the things is
looking at how pervasive infection is across. So
while we're looking at the impact
that infection has from a mortality rate, it
has mortality rates very similar to some of
our common cancers,
but our treatment options are so limited. And
so from an orthopedic standpoint, we really have
an opportunity
to advance the care that we're trying to
provide to our patients, whether through through our
multidisciplinary
clinics with our infectious disease colleagues or exploring
new technologies in terms of how to disrupt
biofilm or this slime layer that coats some
of these implants,
providing in or, cures to infections that have
been so challenging to treat for for so
long. Whether you're a spine surgeon or a
total joint surgeon,
infection continues to be a a problem that
we remains unsolved.
Yeah. What do you think will be some
other
big disruptors
in orthopedics
and total joint care that you expect, in
2026?
I think access and and rapid recovery. I
think looking at
not only speeding up the surgery, but decreasing
the challenges
after the surgery. And we've done that in
identifying and we take care of a really
unhealthy patient population in in rural West Virginia.
One of the things that we identified is
we have to get these patients ready for
surgery to decrease the readmissions, to decrease their
length of stay. And so we developed an
orthopedic medical optimization program where the patients get
involved with the care prior to even setting
foot in the OR, and that's really improved
our results,
thereafter.
And can you speak more to, you know,
your refs referencing, you know, working with this
complex patient population? I know you I know
I'm out there. You're serving a largely rural,
landscape.
And I guess, can you talk more about
how that reality is shaping, how you think
about scaling services like spine, joint replacement, and
trauma?
Yeah. I I think, you know, in terms
of scaling it, I think rural care really
develops through reliability,
through delivery of care, not through just promises.
And I think that's an important aspect of
what we can deliver,
from an orthopedic standpoint, from a system standpoint.
It's how do we reduce that friction,
whether it's through our medical optimization program or
whether it's trying to prevent,
osteoporotic fractures through our metabolic bone,
optimization pathways.
And I think it's taking those best
You know, when we're working in this sort
of hub and spoke model, you know, the
complex cases are coming to the tertiary center,
but we as that academic hub can also
send some of our best practices, some of
those pathways
out to our system hospitals to improve the
care that they're receiving.
Mhmm. And how are you thinking about I
know CMSA,
they have,
going on their,
rural health, transformation
model. Can you speak to that?
I think that's one that's a tough,
aspect to navigate,
from a funding perspective. I think that's where
we had to have good value based care
in terms of what we're putting out there,
for our patients and being,
responsible along that pathway.
Got it. And then doctor Deeds, one last
question for you is, you know, besides everything
that we have spoken about, what are three
other
big health care trends that you've been following?
I think,
our workforce is extremely important. I think it's
maintaining that great team doing the things that
they wanna do. I think looking at AI
enabling technology
is one of the methods that we can,
see the the burdens decreased on our workforce,
but doing it in a responsible fashion. And
then I think working on these collaboration, these
relationships between academic medicine and industry where we
can form partnerships that really develop
the and, lead to translatable care that we
can provide to our patients.
Great. Well, doctor Dietz, thank you so much
again for taking the time to chat. It's
been a great conversation, and I hope to
connect again. Thanks so much, Carly. I really
appreciate it.