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Collaboration Leads to Success
Program Highlight
Collaboration Leads to Success
Physicians at BIDMC are taking a unique approach to treating patients with back problems.
Photo: Drs. Kevin McGuire, MD, MS, Orthopaedic Surgery (left), and Michael Groff, MD, FACS, Neurosurgery, co-direct the Spine Center at BIDMC.
Physicians at BIDMC are taking a unique approach to treating patients with back problems. Traditionally, a patient may make an appointment with a neurosurgeon only to be told he or she would be better served by an orthopaedic surgeon or through pain injections. That leaves the patient to start from scratch, researching a new doctor. At BIDMC’s Spine Center, however, new patients have immediate access to an orthopaedic surgeon, a neurosurgeon, a physiatrist and an anesthesiologist.
“If you come to see me and I feel that you would be better served by another member of our team, I will get you an appointment with them, possibly in the same day,” said Michael Groff, MD, FACS, Neurosurgery, and Co-Director of BIDMC’s Spine Center. “The real win here is that patients don’t have to go to a new place for treatment. They get the right care, quickly and at one location.”
The team Groff refers to includes Kevin McGuire, MD, MS, Orthopaedic Surgery, and Co-Director of the Spine Center; Musa Moris Aner, MD, Pain Management; John Keel, MD, Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation, and Medical Director of the Spine Center; Stefan Muzin, MD, Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation; Efstathios (Steve) Papavassiliou, MD, Neurosurgery; and Andrew White, MD, Orthopaedic Surgery.
“Our patients have really responded well to this multidisciplinary approach,” McGuire said. “They feel good knowing they will be seeing another physician in the clinic and that we are all talking with each other about their care.”
Aner can usually be found in the Arnold Pain Management Center at BIDMC. But once a week, he spends a full day at the Spine Center. “We’re sharing more patients now than we have in the past few years,” Aner said of the partnership.
Keel said the parallels between Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation and Neurosurgery as well as Orthopaedic Surgery made the collaboration natural. “Like the surgical specialties, Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation focuses on spinal cord injuries and trauma,” Keel said. “Our body of knowledge is a good complement.”
The physicians have even found the time to explain to patients the concept of the Spine Center and answer several commonly asked questions in short videos posted to BIDMC’s external Web site. Click here to visit the Hot Topics page.
“We all have a similar style of thinking,” Muzin said about the Spine Center’s physicians. “We exhaust conservative care before recommending surgery.”
The Spine Center also has a presence in Needham. Groff, McGuire, Keel, Muzin and Papavassiliou have established routine outpatient schedules at the Spine Center at BID-Needham.
“We find that our patients who live outside of the city will come to the main campus for surgery, but would like to be seen in Needham for outpatient care,” McGuire said. “The office is easier to get to and the parking is better.”
Groff said expanding to Needham was a part of the plan since the Spine Center’s inception. “We all go out there as representatives of the Spine Center,” he said. “We provide coordinated care from Longwood to Needham.”
Groff said the collaboration has been a wonderful learning experience because it has allowed him to see what physicians in other specialties bring to the table. “We’re tightly integrated and it’s really unheard of in New England,” he said.
McGuire agrees saying it is rare to find a multidisciplinary spine center in an academic hospital, but that it has been successful at BIDMC because the medical center made it a priority. “We’re growing,” he said. “We will continue to focus on a culture of taking care of patients in a collaborative manner.”
Musa Moris Aner, MD, Pain Management, is also a member of the Spine Center. He treats patients who would be better served with pain injections than surgery.
Posted February 1, 2010
