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dialogue

16

MAY / JUN 2017

I 

Healthcare Journal of Baton Rouge  

hire more help in order to make sure this

was done beforehand, otherwise, you can’t

do the surgery. You go through a long list

of things you just have to do. We also have

to document things very well; much more

than we used to have to. Now there are CMS

requirements. I do a very involved history

or physical before you go to surgery; there

is a long checklist. That just takes a lot more

administrative time, both for private prac-

tice and the hospital, just to get a procedure

done in the operating room.

Editor

Has the scope of practice changed at

all for physicians, because of financing or

other reasons like non-surgeons becom-

ing more involved?

Olinde

 Yes, I think so since I have been in

practice. Nowadays all of themajor hospitals

have hospitalists that basically spend 24/7

at the hospital. It’s unusual now for a pri-

vate internist or family doctor to go to the

hospital and see their patients. They basi-

cally hand them over to hospitalists that

take care of these patients. Which I think is

a better thing—they do this all day long, they

are more familiar with it, they’re there all

the time. If there is an emergency or medi-

cal problem, they take care of it quickly. We

also have physician extenders. That’s a lot

more common. I can tell you for the sur-

geon on call, it’s not infrequent I get called

by the physician assistant, by the nurse prac-

titioner, or by the resident. I don’t get called

by attending physicians. So they can see a

lot more patients, more quickly, and cover

more ground with these physician extend-

ers and residents. That has changed a lot the

last few years.

Editor

I am sure managing innovation is

part of what you do as Chief Medical Offi-

cer. Can you talk a little bit about how tech-

nology has improved and innovations have

come about? How do you filter through

that and make those decisions?

Olinde

 Sure, there are some innovative new

things in surgery. One of the major ones I

can think of is robotics. Robotic surgeries

have gotten very large. It used to be that the

robot was used almost exclusively for Urol-

ogy and nowGeneral Surgery uses it, Gyne-

cology uses it, Plastic Surgery. In fact, for

me it’s sometimes a headache in that I’ve

got to find room for surgeons to use that

robot. Even some surgeons at other hospi-

tals will want to have operating room time

here at our hospital, just so they can use the

robot. That’s a big, very expensive piece of