August 18, 2016
In a recent issue of Becker's Spine Review, Dr. Frank Phillips, director of the division of spine surgery at Rush University Medical Center and co-founder of the Midwest Orthopaedics at Rush Minimally Invasive Spine Institute, talks about the current state of minimally invasive spine surgery and its future, including outpatient ambulatory surgery centers (ASC) and bundled payments or package pricing.
"Undoubtedly outpatient spine is the future," says Dr. Phillips. "The biggest deterrent right now is the ability to reproducibly perform more complex surgeries in the ASC. It's about managing perioperative analgesia and postoperative pain. There is no surgical reason why we can't do spine surgeries as an outpatient, but peri-operative pain management is critical."
