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Becker’s Healthcare Podcast
Michael Verdon, DO, FACOS, Neurological Spine Surgeon at Transcendent Care, Inc.
00:12:14
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- [00:00]
A
This is Carly Beam with the Becker Spine and Orthopedics podcast. And today I'm thrilled to be joined by Dr. Michael Verdon, a spine surgeon at Transcendent Care. Dr. Verdin, thank you so much for being here today.
- [00:14]
B
Appreciate it. Thanks for the opportunity to talk.
- [00:16]
A
Absolutely. Before we dive into our questions, could you introduce yourself and tell us more about your background?
- [00:24]
B
Yeah. My name is Mike Verdon. I'm a neurosurgeon in Dayton, Ohio. I've been in practice for going on 16 years this year. Been basically spine surgery is kind of what I do. Community spine surgeon in, in Dayton. I've been in a private practice setting essentially, or community setting my whole career. Started a couple of practices. I've been involved with startup projects with service line development as well as hospital service line development as well. So that's about it.
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A
Great. And it sounds like, you know. So you said you've been in community care and private practice for 16 years. I'd love to just kind of hear what are some of the biggest changes that you've seen in that landscape in your career.
- [01:17]
B
I think over time it's really Covid, in my opinion, gutted the workforce. So a lot of people who were late career and not really, or mid to late career, not really wanting to dig into what was going on has left. So there's been a huge experience drain out of the entire healthcare system from nursing to administration to lab pt, really all across the board. So it's now much more do it yourself kind of situation. So we've had to try to use or develop technology technique to make it better for us to evaluate patients, be more efficient. So I think what's happened post Covid is there's this push for efficiency and there's not a human work pool to help with that. And you have to provide the same level of care with less human resources. So more things need to be processed oriented instead of people oriented. And I think that's going to continue to go moving forward.
- [02:20]
A
Got it. And can you talk about some of the other biggest healthcare trends that you're following today?
- [02:28]
B
Well, kind of the rise of ingenic AI in the clinical space from an office documentation standpoint. So there's quite a few technologies out there that listen to the interaction between the patient physician and generate notes or potentially orders off of that. It's primarily, it seems to me, for the primary care space or that's the ideal location for it. I'm kind of looking to see how that's going to influence or eventually show up in Specialty clinics like spine or orthopedics or cardiac, because I think there's a huge need for that, those kind of technologies there.
- [03:08]
A
And how are you using AI in your practice, if at all?
- [03:13]
B
We are actually. We, we have been using a tool that we developed to triage patients based on the referral type. So we know how to order or schedule their appointments. We've been using that in the clinic for about three years now. You know, patients call, get a referral, my office staff calls and they, we have a kind of the software based package that helps question the patients and then it's a algorithmic way to triage patients based on their symptom severity. And it's validated tool that we've used for a while and it's really helped. I mean my throughput is increased by a factor of two in other clinics. They're out, you have their surgical output volume is increased by 10%. So it's really pretty neat. You have a way and the patients get early treatment, right person, right time kind of thing. And it's been good for the patients and clinical efficiencies.
- [04:07]
A
Yeah, that sounds especially useful too just in terms of getting patients what they need quicker through the help of AI. And like besides, you know, these listening tools and triage, what other applications for AI and spycare do you think will really take front and center stage in the coming years?
- [04:27]
B
I think so decision support tools kind of for people. So the whole concept of, you know, open AI really as a technology scrapes the Internet for knowledge to give you suggestions. Well, I think there's going to be a back end where research tools are going to feed those kind of machines and you're going to have fresh new research type data to again fuel those large machines to create outputs that are relevant to a patient or to a patient population. I was talking to a friend of mine yesterday, it's like almost each individual hospital will be its own data hub, which is, if you think about that, pretty fascinating, right? So you can treat the patients in your community with the disease states that they're presenting with based on your own clinical data and help evolve care for your community, which is really what we need. We need like the right treatment for the community because you know, what is a disease process that's very common in Detroit is not the same as it is in Dubai. They're just very different based on the way people live and how the diseases are presenting. And we're going to have tools to be able to help the people at the bedside get the patient what they need as soon as they can.
- [05:48]
A
Absolutely. And really just kind of parsing through like the nuance you said and you know, between different communities.
- [05:55]
B
Right.
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A
And what are some other things that are really exciting you right now in spine and in healthcare?
- [06:03]
B
You know, I think it's not exciting, but it's certainly a huge opportunity is this whole care, the access model that they're talking about for Medicare patient population. So we're going to be forced, I think organizations are going to be forced to treat for value, meaning not everybody. You're not going to get paid per piecemeal, you're going to get paid per patient population or per disease state for the patient population. It's kind of an old fashioned version of capitated medicine under a certain disease state. And whoever owns that whole entire system of care is going to provide the best care, usually have the whole patient population, quote unquote captive that would be surgical and non surgical and then again have the data to prove that their model of care is most effective. So it's a real opportunity. I think as a physician I create a lot of data and I generate a lot of data and I become the tool that applies the data. I think that's how we're going to change. Medicine is going to change. It's not. You're not in the healthcare business anymore, you're in the healthcare data business. And I feel like once people wake up to that, their whole, I think a lot of the relationships could change.
- [07:22]
A
Very well said. And can you talk about how you're thinking about growth over the next 12 to 24 months? Whether it's, you know, expanding practice locations, increasing your volume or know, just kind of expanding on this value based care that you're talking about.
- [07:39]
B
I think there's going to be more of a push, not it's going to be effective quality volume. Right. So we can't just. So a lot of times we hear models about it's going to be quality based outcomes or no volume is going to stay the same. There's going to be a premium for quality volume. And how I think that needs to be built is by having a standard way to just take a patient in. And that's what essentially triage is, right? A standard way to evaluate patient, a standard way to work a patient up, a standard. And there's so much variability across the regions for say spine care. Right. What, what is the standard treatment in your community for this mixed bundle aesthetic L5S1 on a healthy 45 year old? It is wildly different. The places I've lived. So I think those nuances are not going to go away, but you're going to. They're going to value the outcome. So, you know, I was watching the movie the Founder. It's about Ray Kroc up in your neck of the woods at the founder McDonald's. And he had a revelation when he was told that he wasn't in the hamburger business, that he was in the real estate business. And I kind of feel like we're in the data business, so we have to own what we're producing and then look at what we're doing and ask ourselves, is this really valuable? And then can you market what you do?
- [09:05]
A
Absolutely. And I'm wondering, obviously, a lot of opportunities, a lot of exciting things going on. What are some of the biggest headwinds that you're preparing for going into 2026?
- [09:18]
B
I think in my market, consolidation and or integration vertically. So there's not a lot of room for independent practice to function. I think you have. We definitely are going to have to partner with hospital systems no matter where you are. From an economies of scale standpoint. You know, I think that there's reimbursements declining to a point where it's punitive to do cases, to do clinic. You can't do clinic because you'll lose money in the clinic, which seems crazy, but the reimbursement's gotten so low, the amount of volume you have to take on to make it up or the cost that you have to assume to attain the patient pool is, Is not. Is counterproductive. So I don't think that that model is going to be sustainable. I don't think any of the older model that we're used to fee for service is sustainable in any way, shape or form. We're in. We're definitely in a strange new world where the models are going to be laid out there and we have to iterate our way through it.
- [10:26]
A
Got it. And just my last question for you and might have touched on it a bit already, but if you can pinpoint a single key disruptor to spine surgery in the next year, what would it be?
- [10:42]
B
Migration of technologies out of the operating room and into the clinic? I think that's really where we haven't thought about it much yet. But how are most surgeons that I know or neuro or orthospine are not technophobes. We embrace technology development, but that has not shown up in the way of office or operations and. Or service line development. And that migration out will whoever embraces that and uses that information to grow and to handle obstacles to care delivery will likely succeed. And I think those who refuse to acknowledge that will probably not won't be able to scale. It's just a matter of the volume coming in cannot be handled by a human anymore. There needs to be some element of machine learning or identification to parse through the silver tsunami that's coming at all of us.
- [11:52]
A
Well, thank you so much for joining us today, Dr. Verdin. It's been a pleasure speaking with you and I look forward to connecting down the line.
- [12:00]
B
Thank you very much. I appreciate the opportunity. Have a good day.
- [12:02]
A
Thank you. Have a good day. Bye.