Roy Exum: A Great Orthopedic Success

  • Saturday, May 23, 2015
  • Roy Exum
Roy Exum
Roy Exum

Mark Freeman, the chief of orthopedic surgery at Erlanger Hospital, shared a dazzling look at our area’s Level One Trauma Center Friday morning. Yet, as he described the dramatic changes that have occurred in just the past 12 months, the promise of what will happen within the next year was even more appealing. Believe this, our flagship hospital is getting well in a hurry.

“If you were to take a map and draw a circle of everything within 100 miles of where we are, you would see that, while we are the largest hospital in Chattanooga, our responsibility to every person within that circle who lives in Southeast Tennessee, Western North Carolina, North Georgia and Northeast Alabama is very real.

We take it very seriously and, right now, we have the best credentialed group of orthopedic doctors in the history of this hospital.

“When you think about the subspecialties like foot-ankle, knee and hip, spine, shoulder and so forth, we have an expert who has taken advanced fellowship training in every discipline. Please don’t take that as bragging; instead you need to know it reflects what the new hospital administration has been able to accomplish in just a short time,” he said.  

“It is pretty obvious, especially to the physicians and staff who are here every day, that when (CEO) Kevin Spiegel got here Erlanger was a ship that was sinking. I’ll be honest about that. We were half-full of water and I’m not talking about a cabin cruiser or some yacht. The hospital is an ocean liner, a huge and unwieldy vessel that takes a while to turn around, and, while it hasn’t been easy and has required not only hard work but hard decisions, I believe we’ve weathered the storm.”

Dr. Freeman’s view was quite candid. He said the biggest thing Spiegel’s team brought to the table was the ability to adapt. Medicine today isn’t what it was five years ago and Dr. Freeman is one of over 30 orthopedic surgeons who today aren’t in private practice but are actually employees of the hospital.

“This is the way that medical practices are going. Just the paper work and regulations make a small partnership tough to manage, but the biggest thing is we are no longer profit-driven. Sure, the hospital must make money, but our orthopedic physicians can emphasize ‘quality’ as well as ‘quantity.’” the Memphis native explained.

By the end of the year construction will be completed on six new surgical suites dedicated to orthopedics. There will be a private entrance for same-day or admission patients and a floor of the hospital where nothing but orthopedic patients will be treated by orthopedic-minded nurses and staff. A burn unit will be revived and other surgeons are now being recruited.

“I think you need to see what the overall picture will be. Physical therapy will be on that floor. Case workers will be on that floor,” said Dr. Freeman. “I believe our patients will receive better care, but they also won’t have to go all over the hospital to get it.”

The residents program will also thrive in a central location. “Too often our patients and their families overlook what a tremendous benefit the UT School of Medicine is for Erlanger. A key point that gets overlooked is that there are 155 resident programs in the United States and every year our students take a test that all residents do. Erlanger students just placed in the 98 percentile. Think about that – the UT School of Medicine is one of the Top Five programs in the country right now. We are thrilled about that.”

Dr. Freeman confirmed Erlanger’s team can do more orthopedic procedures than any other hospital. “We have more trained specialists and, with our Regional Operations Center, we can literally have a surgical team waiting when an ambulance or helicopter arrives with a person who is in bad shape. Too often minutes are critical.”

The Erlanger Regional Operations Center resembles a Star Wars’ type setting that is mind-boggling. Huge monitors can pinpoint any emergency and an EMT team has instant access to an emergency room physician who can give guidance to the rescuers. By the time the patient arrives, registration is done, a bed is assigned and an emergency care team is in place. “People from all over the country are coming to look at our model,” said the center’s director, the highly-respected emergency head Dr. James Creel.

“Several years ago there was a terrible wreck at the Tennessee-Georgia line on I-75 and we had 18 critical patients suddenly on their way to us. We had everyone handled in 30 minutes, a miracle at the time, but with our new Operations Center, we could have had an emergency room team waiting on each one as they got here,” Dr. Creel said. “There is no better set-up anywhere in the country right now. That is how committed Erlanger is to this community.”

Dr. Freeman noted all of this doesn’t happen overnight, “any more than a huge ocean liner can stop and turn and get back underway. But in the years I have been at Erlanger, I can never remember as many senior administrative staff attending more meetings, asking more questions, or being as willing to help. I am enormously proud of what the entire hospital has accomplished, but I can verify that Erlanger orthopedics is already better than it has ever been,” he said.

“New equipment? It has already been shipped and the new surgical suites will be state of the art,” he told me. “To call what has happened ‘dramatic’ doesn’t do it justice and what is going to happen in the next year is more than ‘exciting.’ Let’s just hope we can keep you healthy where we don’t have to prove it on you!”

royexum@aol.com

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