Category: news

Coursework is the first-of-its-kind to focus on both clinical and operational efficiency in orthopedic surgery
Phoenix, AZ Feb 24, 2014 – Intralign, a specialty healthcare services provider, today announced it will partner with one of the world’s most respected orthopedic care providers, Hospital for Special Surgery, to develop a first-of-its-kind training curriculum for Surgical First Assistants (SFAs) – a clinical specialty comprised of surgeons, medical doctors, physician’s assistants and registered nurse first assists, that is in high demand to help provide better patient care. The educational program, operating as Intralign Academy, will teach the latest technologies and methodologies in orthopedic care, as well as best practices for increasing operational efficiency in the surgical suite.
Leaders from Hospital for Special Surgery will provide insight and support to enhance Intralign’s existing Academy programs. Intralign Academy is the nation’s first professional academy to train SFAs in both operational and clinical excellence with an emphasis on credentialing, clinical training, operating room management and continuing education.
“Surgical first assistants help surgeons focus on the highest-value care activities, which can ultimately increase surgical throughput. Despite their pivotal role in the OR, there are few continuing education opportunities for SFAs today in which the curriculum goes beyond clinical techniques to also train on best operational practices to address the changing realities of healthcare,” said Rick Ferreira, president and CEO of Intralign. “By leveraging real-world insights from the most sought-after experts in orthopedic care, we can enrich Intralign’s educational offering and provide the strongest possible competencies for SFAs in orthopedic and total joint replacement training. These skills will further enhance Intralign SFAs’ ability to deliver high-quality, consistent and professional assistance that allows a surgeon to do more with fewer resources.”
Intralign’s Intra-Operative Support service makes highly trained SFAs available to the hospital to function as a “surgeon extender,” a specially trained healthcare worker who performs tasks that might otherwise be performed by a surgeon. The advanced support SFAs provide help optimize the surgeon’s efficiency throughout the case, which reduces procedure time and enhances patient throughput.
“We believe that in order to provide the best possible orthopedic care for every patient, knowledge of evolving techniques and methodologies should be shared,” said Louis Shapiro, president and CEO, Hospital for Special Surgery. “Through our partnership with Intralign, we can help develop a training program that will be the gold standard for surgical first assistant education for years to come.”
As part of the current program, Intralign Academy offers clinical training in a variety of surgical specialties in addition to orthopedics, including surgical robotics. Professionals enrolled in Intralign Academy are educated on OR behavior, communication and optimal methods for creating OR efficiencies, in addition to clinical best practices, which equip them with the broadest perspectives to assist any surgeon in any environment.

This article appears in the January/February print issue of Surgical Products.
Feb 6, 2014
by Lars Thording, Vice President of Marketing and Public Affairs, Intralign
With a growing aging population, and as many as 32 million Americans entering the healthcare system in 2014, the Association of American Medical Colleges estimates there will be a shortage of 91,500 doctors by 2020.
Much of the recent physician shortage conversations have been centered on a deficiency of primary care physicians, but of the estimated shortfall, roughly 46,100 will be surgeons and specialists.
With the foreseeable demand increasing at a faster rate than our current physician supply, I’m not surprised that conversations have heated up around different approaches to address the pending shortage before care delivery is dramatically impacted. Many of these dialogues involve a number of the usual suspects, strategies that have been positioned to address physician shortage issues in the past, such as the need to increase the number of residency training programs, reform scope of practice laws, expand the National Health Services Corps, develop student loan forgiveness programs and institute new staffing models.
We know there is no magic bullet to solve our seemingly ongoing physician shortage issues. However, from the list above, there is one approach in particular that is gaining steam within the surgical suite that is helping alleviate some of the mounting pressure on surgeons to meet the needs of a growing patient population.
Recently a study by RAND Corp. found that an expansion of the role of nurse practitioners and physician assistants could help eliminate 50 percent, or more, of the primary care physician shortage in the U.S. by 2025 – a concept being implemented beyond the primary care office walls in the OR.
A growth in staffing models that emphasizes better use of “physician extenders,” healthcare professionals who are licensed to practice medicine under the direction of physicians and surgeons, has emerged successfully over the past decade.
In the OR, qualified physician extenders typically are called Surgical First Assists (SFAs). SFAs are traditionally surgeons, medical doctors (MDs), physician assistants (PA-C), registered nurse first assists (RNFA) and advanced registrar nurse practitioners (ARNP). These highly trained SFAs provide advanced support that scrub techs are unqualified to provide, which helps free up the surgeons time to focus on tasks more appropriate for their level of medical training. This allows the surgeon to provide better quality of care with fewer resources and to increase surgical throughput, arguably leading to better surgeon satisfaction and better care economics for the hospital. At Intralign, our data shows the use of SFAs can reduce surgery time by 30 percent and increase surgeon throughput by 42 percent.
From a hospital-wide perspective, SFAs also help decrease costs by avoiding reimbursement barriers and lowering administrative tasks.
A few years ago, a large metropolitan hospital based on the East Coast was experiencing an increasingly heavy surgery load and a short supply of surgeons when it employed Intralign SFAs to help reduce surgery time, increase throughput and safeguard its surgical quality reputation.
Because Intralign SFAs are trained in the latest surgical techniques and devices, they can support the surgeon in many tasks. With this level of support, procedure times are shorter. Over time, this means that surgeon time and operating room time is freed up, allowing hospitals to accommodate more procedures. The exciting part of this equation is this can all be accomplished without adding more surgeon staff and without sacrificing quality.
During the first year, SFAs were added to a small fraction of procedures, which allowed the surgical team time to adjust roles and build chemistry. Once fully implemented, the SFA structure helped reduce hip and knee replacement surgery time by more than 100 hours, which is the equivalent to conducting roughly 40 arthroplasty procedures. The team also experienced nearly 500 hours of reduced general surgery time, which translates to time available to perform almost 250 additional general surgery procedures a year.
As our healthcare landscape continues to evolve, more efficient care delivery demands will call for a continued level of clinical labor specialization that optimizes surgeon involvement without impacting quality of care.
Qualified clinical staff can fill a shortage gap by providing the support needed to allow those with the highest level of certification to address the highlight level of patient needs.
Everyone understands there are many factors that need to be addressed to be able to better serve our future surgical patient’s needs, but qualified physician extenders will be critical in getting us there. The SFA profession will only grow in volume and importance, so I encourage hospital OR leadership to take a closer look at staffing models that not only help them meet patient demand, but present increased efficiency and revenue opportunities for their organization.