Becker’s ASC Review recently spoke with an expert on connected healthcare technology to understand major trends affecting the industry and how ASCs can overcome key challenges related to the entire orthopedic episode of patient care. Liane Teplitsky, vice president and general manager of technology and data solutions, Zimmer Biomet, discussed how ASCs can access needed solutions to many of their most prevalent needs.
Key site-of-care shift challenges that have proven difficult to address in ASCs
The immediate challenge facing ASCs is how to scale to meet the growing patient demand for same-day surgeries without sacrificing quality of care, value and patient satisfaction, explained Ms. Teplitsky.
“In other industries, the challenges that come with a significant uptick in demand and volume, have been met by leveraging technology to automate and simplify complex and time-intensive processes to boost efficiencies,” Ms. Teplitsky said. “In the healthcare industry, however, taking on these challenges has very real and very human consequences.”
Ms. Teplitsky went on to explain that for ASCs, where talented surgeons, nurses and care teams bring passion, expertise and — most importantly — a human element to the work they do, technology needs to be adopted with some careful considerations. For instance, how well will it integrate with existing workflows? Does it empower surgeons and care teams to make smarter, more informed choices? Does it create efficiencies that allow more patients to get care while raising the overall standard of patient experience explained Ms. Teplitsky.
“Zimmer Biomet has been at the forefront of developing integrated digital and robotic technology solutions to address the unique needs of orthopedic surgeons, especially those working in outpatient facilities like ASCs,” Ms. Teplitsky said. “In March 2020, we introduced our ASC Solutions offering, that delivers a portfolio of technologies, services and support to help ASCs enhance efficiencies and lower costs across the episode of care, as well as leverage data-driven insights to optimize care and the patient experience.”
Last month, Zimmer Biomet announced ZBEdge, the company’s suite of integrated technologies designed to work in concert to support informed decision-making and help customers deliver greater value. ZBEdge connects and enhances surgical robotics platforms, remote care and patient engagement systems, clinically proven digital tools and guidance solutions, and data analytics. Working together, each of these pieces can share data across each patient’s journey and deliver actionable clinical insights that can guide care decisions and personalize care. For ASC customers this could also help with key needs such as payer contracting and negotiation, and more.
Important differences that integrated technologies have made for ASC customers
To better understand the potential value of ZBEdge in an ASC setting from a clinician’s perspective, James Ballard, MD, a board-certified orthopedic surgeon who specializes in outpatient joint replacement at an ASC also provided his perspective. Dr. Ballard has been one of the early adopters of a few components of ZBEdge to streamline his workflow and apply data-driven insights into everyday patient care.
“For me, it was important not just to adopt technology for its own sake, but because it would make a real difference. Many of us in the surgical community fully appreciate the potential that data holds in terms of helping us make better decisions, but we also know that it’s far easier to collect data than to use it. I was looking for a system designed to take that data and make sense of it quickly and easily — and that’s where ZBEdge impressed me most,” Dr. Ballard said.
“I didn’t want to fall into the trap of mistaking activity for achievement,” Dr. Ballard added, highlighting the difference between collecting data and creating actionable insights. “If I was going to integrate technology into my workflow, it needed to be an improvement over the processes and systems that I already had in place.”
In his practice, Dr. Ballard uses multiple ZBEdge components:
• ROSA® Knee System, which provides data-driven assistance, enhanced accuracy2 and clinical insights in the operating room.
• mymobility® with Apple Watch®*, a remote care management system which delivers support and guidance to patients through a connected experience and collects and monitors objective data on patients’ surgical preparation and recovery.
• OrthoIntel Orthopedic Intelligence Platform, which connects the pre- and post-operative data gathered by mymobility with intraoperative data from ROSA to uncover new clinical insights intended to help surgeons and care teams optimize care.
For Dr. Ballard, his ASC’s transition to using digital tools began with the ROSA Knee System.
“In my opinion, Zimmer Biomet’s Persona® Knee implants are the best in the industry, and I wasn’t going to give that up just because I wanted a robotics solution. So, when ROSA Knee was introduced, it not only checked the box in terms of compatibility with Persona Knee but offered a better approach to supporting me during a knee replacement procedure than other robotic systems,” Dr. Ballard said. “Very quickly, ROSA has become incredibly important to me because it actually gives me more control over the surgery, because I know what the surgery is going to look like before I start and then I continue to get real-time data to fine tune the cuts and placements.”
Soon after, Dr. Ballard added the mymobility remote care management system which allowed patients to use the mymobility app on their iPhone and Apple Watch to capture demographic information and activity metrics before and after surgery. That led to the adoption of OrthoIntel, the data analytics platform that combines pre and post-surgical data from mymobility and intraoperative data from ROSA Knee.
“OrthoIntel sits above components like mymobility and ROSA and pulls in all of the data generated by them — so as this system pulls in more data, I will be able to get demographic information about my patient,” Dr. Ballard said. “For example, I can go into the system and say, ‘This is a 55-year-old male, he has this comorbidity, and this type of deformity in the joint and the system can start generating insights that will help me make better decisions for that patient, grounded in data from similar patients.”
Dr. Ballard then provided an example of how the benefits of ZBEdge extend beyond the operating room into the postop follow up.
“I can log in and check up on a patient that I’ve operated on, see their current data from mymobility — their step count and heart rate, their activity level and habits, if they’ve reported any pain or discomfort — and then I can also pull up, in the same place, all of the relevant data from ROSA that was captured both before and during their surgery,” Dr. Ballard said. “It’s incredibly helpful to then show the patient ‘Here your hip-knee-ankle axis was 14 degrees and now we’ve made it 3 degrees and connect that directly to their lived experience recovering from the surgery and regaining their mobility.”
The future of integrated technology in the ASC
For Dr. Ballard, the most exciting thing about ZBEdge — and the role of technology in the ASC, more generally — is the promise that it holds as data analysis and data sources become more robust and more commonplace.
“I know that one day — not far from now — I’ll be able to go into an operating room and use OrthoIntel to look at not only the case at hand but also demographic data from similar patients — age, sex, anatomy, comorbidities — and get an informed recommendation on what will be the best course of action for the patient I’m operating on. But what’s maybe more exciting is that ZBEdge is constantly growing and expanding as new innovations are integrated into the system — and that means that a surgeon who uses it will be constantly elevating their approach to joint replacements and constantly raising the bar in terms of outcomes and experience,” Dr. Ballard said. “And this kind of evolutionary approach and comprehensive data sharing is completely unique to the ZBEdge suite of technologies. No one else is spending so much time looking at how we can use data to ensure that more patients are satisfied with their surgical results. I can see how they’re pushing this forward — it’s exciting and it makes you want to be part of it.”
Thank you to James C. Ballard, MD for sharing his experiences with ZB Edge and the Zimmer Biomet suite of technologies. Dr. Ballard is a joint replacement specialist serving patients in Oregon City, Oregon, and the surrounding communities. Dr. Ballard is a Paid Zimmer Biomet consultant.
*iPhone and Apple Watch are trademarks of Apple, Inc., registered in the US and other countries. Patients must have a compatible iPhone to use the mymobility mobile app; not all patients are suitable for therapy at home.
References
1. Vizient. Outpatient Joint Replacement: An Unnecessary Concern or Market Reality?
2. Parratte, S., et al. Instability After Total Knee Arthroplasty. Journal of Bone Joint Surgery (America). 90(1): 184, 2008.
This article was sponsored by Zimmer Biomet.
