Welcome back to our new mini-interview series with 2019 Interdisciplinary Conference on Orthopedic Value-Based Care Faculty. This week, we have our featured interviewee Dr. Scott Sigman. 

 

Dr. Scott Sigman is one of 38 esteemed speakers joining us at the Third Interdisciplinary Conference on Orthopedic Value-Based Care in Newport Beach, CA, on January 18-20, 2019.

OVBC 2019 Talk 1: “PRO-CON: Do we still need a PT for patients undergoing Joint Surgery” (with Kip Schick, PT, DPT, MB)

OVBC 2019 Talk 2:  “Opioid Sparing Orthopedic Surgery”

View Full Schedule Here: OVBC 2019

 

American College of Perioperative Medicine (ACPM): How Do You Break Silos In Your Organization?

Dr. Sigman: Specifically, within orthopedics with the use of more expensive non-opioid medications, we found that pharmacy silos give us severe limitation in the ability to use these medications at a number of hospitals across the country.  Our focus has been to try and carve out the use of these medications, so that insurance companies will pay for these medications outside of the typical DRG or payment for an individual surgery.  We did this specifically by lobbying congress as well as CMS, both in person in Washington, D.C. as well as through letter writing campaigns.  We were fortunate to hear that as of January 1^st some of these changes will be implemented going forwards through CMS.

 

ACPM: In the past 12 months, how have you adapted to new patient experience expectations in the age of consumerism?

Dr. Sigman: I am a huge believer in social media.  I have postings on Linkedin for my business friends.  I am also on Facebook for my older population of patients as well as  Instagram for my younger population of patients.  I remain connected with my patients.  With these avenues, we can express the latest state of the art techniques that we are performing and in engaging patients directly, we have found that we have great success.

 

ACPM: Surgeries moving to the outpatient area.  How do you get ready for it?

Dr. Sigman: This has been the natural progression for us in the opioid sparing space. We are now successfully operating on patients near opioid free, which opens up the realm of possibility for outpatient surgery for even more extensive operations such as  total hip and knee replacements as well as outpatient spine surgery.  The patient expectations as well as patient selection I think are paramount to make sure that you have the best chance of success for patient experience.

 

About Scott Sigman, MD: Sigman is an orthopaedic surgeon specializing in Sports and has served as Team Physician for the US Ski Jump Team, and serves for the last 20 years as Team Physician at UMASS Lowell. He is the Chief of Orthopaedics at Lowell General Hospital and is considered a national authority in Opioid Sparing Surgery. He has contributed to numerous publications and research studies on advances in orthopaedic surgery.

 

REGISTER TODAY for OVBC 2019!