Intro
Hey, I'm Dr. Ariana DeMers. I'm an orthopedic sports medicine surgeon, and I have successfully integrated orthobiologics into my busy practice so that I can provide a continuum of care and treat patients who are in the gap. The gap is this gray area in orthopedics where standard conservative treatments have not been effective, but surgery may not be warranted. And we usually tell our patients, come back when it's worse. What? These are your patients coming to you for help. Orthobiologics is that solution that can fill the gap and help you treat your patients who are in your office looking to you for help. Orthobiologics can also be an excellent treatment for frustrating problems without good surgical outcomes. This podcast will help you create the orthobiologics business that will make you love your job again. We will focus on value of orthobiologics, patient selection, how to talk to your patients about money, office setup, and other logistics. If this is something you've always wanted but don't know where to start, join me in "The Business of Orthobiologics" podcast.
Dr. Ariana
Hey there. Welcome to lecture 5.1. This is our orthobiologics implementation. You're here. You made it. Today, we'll focus on the critical steps to ensure a smooth integration of orthobiologics into your practice. We'll begin by confirming your legal compliance, equipment setup, and supply acquisition. We'll also confirm your practice is set up for orthobiologics and a cash-based practice. Let's first and foremost review and confirm your legal compliance. Make sure your practice is set up in a compliant way and that you have all the necessary licenses, like a business license for your city, OSHA, and handicapped compliance, and then ensure your practice aligns with all the necessary laws and guidelines to offer orthobiologic treatments, including your malpractice coverage. Then, as always, prioritize the safety and well-being of your patients. Please make sure that you reach out to your legal team and make sure that all of the T's are crossed and I's are dotted and that we have any pending items that have not been completed to get completed prior to offering your orthobiologics. Next, let's talk about your equipment and supplies. Make sure that you have acquired and properly set up all the necessary equipment. That you have the PRP kits ordered, the centrifuge, and the location for your centrifuge. It may be helpful to do a couple of dry runs with staff, friends, or family to make sure you're not missing crucial pieces of the pie. Make sure you have a system to ensure that your equipment is well-maintained and that supplies are consistently available. I recommend a daily or weekly or monthly log of maintenance items that need to be done for safety and cleanliness. Also, make sure that you have a way to reorder your kits so you're not left waiting for something to come in from the mail. Next, we'll talk about quality control and safety measures. Maintaining quality standards is vital for successful orthobiologic procedures. Remember that the safety of your patients and your staff should always be a top priority. Make sure that we know what orthobiologic injectates you are creating and how you are monitoring not only your patient's health but also your injectate quality. Whether you have a RIBA or some other kind of cellular content quantifying device, or you're doing quality control spot checks and sending out for clarity to know what you're making and what quality of injectate you're creating. Make sure that you have that in your acumen and make sure that you know that you're going to send out every 10th specimen or that you know how to make sure that you're creating a quality injectate. Action items. Please take time to review your legal compliance and make any necessary adjustments. Talk with your legal counsel and review any outstanding items. Next, ensure all equipment is properly set up and maintained, and then establish a system to manage your supply inventory effectively, whether that is through checklists or your standard inventory supply manager. Make sure you decide on par levels and what should trigger a reorder. I recommend you have patients prepay for the treatments, so you don't have a lot of inventory sitting around and you know that you're going to have enough. As far as resources, you can find resources for legal and regulatory guidelines through the Small Business Administration, State Medical Licensure, as well as our previous modules. For equipment maintenance checklists and safety protocols, please refer to the company and your distributor recommendations for safety. Preparing your practice for orthobiologic key points. Number one, make sure you set up your physical space. Design the layout and considerations for your orthobiologic treatment area. Make sure that if you're going to have a specific area or room that does orthobiologics, you have all the necessary equipment and supplies in the cabinets or somewhere. Make sure you comply with safety and regulatory standards. Next, staff training and onboarding. You have those training protocols for blood draw, for spinning, for making sure that if you're not going to be creating the injectate, that you have a well-trained process to create a really good quality injectate. Then make sure you clarify all of your staff roles and responsibilities, and then obviously, have proper documentation and certification for blood draw, for lab management, all of those things. Because you want to have continued success, we want to maintain that adequate supply of orthobiologic materials and have a tracking system to monitor those inventory levels to reduce waste and control costs. Additionally, we want to make sure that you develop a streamlined process for patient identification, whether it's diagnosis-based or protocol-based. This may include things such as every patient with a partial thickness rotator cuff tear is a candidate and every patient with trochanteric hip pain is a patient or a candidate. Or if they have already gone through conservative therapies for knee arthritis and everyone who has gotten hyaluronic acid injections is now a patient for orthobiologics, just make sure you have a protocol so that nobody gets missed and everyone has the opportunity to offer orthobiologics to their patients. Action items: Please create a checklist for setting up your treatment area, confirm that your staff is well trained and that there's a protocol and a way to train staff that now joins your practice or new staff in the future, and document that procedure so you don't have to continue to reinvent that wheel. Obviously, established a system for inventory management and who's in charge of that, as well as implementing a patient identification protocol. Resources are in your modules for regulatory guidelines and practice setup, staff training materials, and your inventory management tools. Next, we'll just review key points in integrating ultrasound into your practice. We've gone through how to select the right ultrasound equipment. Just confirm that you are working with your ultrasound and really have an excellent way to practice, whether it's on your friends or family. I would recommend you practice on every single one of your patients in the office. Whether you're doing injection-based therapy, make sure that you are training and have certification for your ultrasound injection-based therapies, and then ensure that safe, efficient ultrasound-guided injections due to your training. I'm going to recommend continued daily use of ultrasound both for diagnostic and injection-based therapies. Whether or not it's ultrasound-guided orthobiologic injections or just your standard injections for cortisone, I would get really used to using your ultrasound every day. Make sure that you identify patients who can benefit from those ultrasound-guided injections, whether it's HA or cortisone. Have your team set this ultrasound up in your patient room so that you're prompted to use it for every patient, even if it's just for 10 seconds. Really get used to using this as a second or third hand. Review your anatomy and pathology for target areas in your ultrasound-guided injections, and then use Module 2 videos, YouTube videos, Nysora, or other injection videos for quick review prior to your orthobiologic injections. Then I would take patient feedback and use this for continuous improvement. Collect patient feedback to refine your ultrasound-guided injection procedures, monitor your outcomes, and make the necessary adjustments. If you have not already procured your ultrasound, please do so. Make sure and arrange for staff training and certification as needed for any ultrasound training. If you haven't already started offering ultrasound-guided injections, start today. This is a really, really easy way to get really facile with ultrasound-guided injections. And then develop a system for gathering and analyzing feedback so that you know whether this is useful for your patients or not. I will tell you that we know ultrasound-guided injections are more effective, less painful, and give you really good long-term outcomes, but also help with quick diagnoses that you don't have to wait for an ultrasound MRI. You don't have to wait, and you can confirm diagnoses right there on the spot and create a treatment protocol right there and then. Hopefully, this helps for getting you ready for the implementation of your orthobiologic injections. We'll see you in the next video.
Outro
This has been "The Business of Orthobiologics" podcast. Thank you so much for joining us today. If you want to know more, please join us on the website, "PRP-Now.com", and click on the FREE masterclass. Also, don't forget to SUBSCRIBE to this podcast to get more guidance on integrating PRP in your busy practice. Bye for now.