Awake Spine Reimbursement Strategies

Speaker 1So our next talk is gonna be from uh Jamie Rindler. So, um, one thing that we've thought about a lot is uh Innovation. And, um, obviously, what you're seeing today with the Awaken Women surgical perspective is very innovative. Uh, Jamie Rindler has been a really kind supporter of us. He runs something called the Marvel Group. I wanted to bring him in because he's really come up with a very innovative Business model for how he distributes implants. And I wanted him to speak briefly about his innovations around all that.

Speaker 2This is the mic today, huh. Thanks, Doctor Straw. Thanks for inviting us here. My name is Jamie Rendler. I'm the founder and CEO of Marvel Group.

Speaker 2Honored to be here today. Uh, we have, uh, much like everyone here has pioneered the technique of Awake spinal fusion. We are pioneering the technique of the surgical outcome warranty for your patients.

Speaker 2So this, uh, we call that our patient promise, and it's part of a larger program, uh, that we call our surgical stewardship program.

Speaker 2Larry Faye here is here today to talk a little, talk us through our surgical stewardship program. And uh as he does, I want you to kind of frame this, uh, keep this in mind. Imagine being able to offer your community and your patients a surgical outcome warranty for Awake spinal fusion. So with that, I'm gonna turn it over to Larry Faye. We'll walk you through our program, and then we'll answer some questions at the end.

Speaker 3Good morning, everybody. My name's Larry F. I'm the VP of Business development, and um what Jamie said is we're very unique in what we do.

Speaker 3Uh, we find that our surgeon partners, uh, see a surgical outcome warranty as game-changing with their practice, does have to have a fit.

Speaker 3And honestly, most of the surgeon Practices that we work with are independent, doesn't have to be. There's some elements that work with that, but it, it does have to fit with what we do. But I'm gonna discuss mainly what our surgical stewardship program is and why it's different, but as a company, we do a lot of things that we will not touch on today. In fact, we're just gonna touch on a high level of that, and there will be a lot of questions about what we talk about.

Speaker 3But we actually coordinate with all of these stakeholders and that's what makes us unique we contract with them and uh our whole purpose is to attempt to to assist in better outcomes and reduced healthcare costs.

Speaker 3But we wanna do that and what we wanna mainly talk about is we did a lot of Research early on about what surgeons really are looking for, and we're gonna be very blunt about what we talked about today.

Speaker 3And that is, is that

Speaker 3Surgeons have two Primary concerns, and that is that they just don't want to attract more patients, they want to attract more ideal patients.

Speaker 3And secondly, we hear this over and over and over, surgeons, Spine surgeons want to obtain higher Reimbursement for their superior outcomes and ironically we work in this space and we've been doing it for a number of years.

Speaker 3We have a program called Surgical stewardship. Surgical stewardship actually has 4 different individual platforms that all work together. We're gonna touch on each one.

Speaker 3The initial one is called patient promise, and this is the foundational component or element of what we use in almost all four of these platforms and essentially what Jamie had mentioned is the patient promise is a Surgery or surgical outcome warranty. How does that work and what is it? All the devices and biologics that Marvel Group provides you as a surgeon come with a surgical outcome warranty.

Speaker 3So people ask, well, what does that mean? What does that look like? What is it? And it's actually two layers. One is, uh, surgeries come with a 1 year money back guarantee.

Speaker 3Up to $5000 paid directly to a patient if within a 365 day window, a Revision surgery is needed for any reason, including infection.

Speaker 3So that offers your patient an extra layer of financial protection. It also offers you as a surgeon or a practice.

Speaker 3An advantage and a, and a amplifying message that you can create that, that we will work with and we'll discuss a little bit.

Speaker 3Marvel Group

Speaker 3Actually works with and contracts with a wide range of device manufacturers. Thus, we do have a wide or extensive offering of device choices that, uh, that we provide our surgeon partners. So I wanna ask you a question.

Speaker 3Actually, several. If you could offer your patients a referral in referral sources a surgical outcome warranty, would they view your practice differently?

Speaker 3And would a surgical outcome warranty offer a unique Marketing advantage that would distinguish and differentiate you from the Other surgeons that you compete with.

Speaker 3And what a surgical outcome warranty help build trust and confidence with potential referral sources, and we know the answer to that is yes in all three because we work with surgeons who work in this area and they have a great effect and it helps us send a message to them and their patients. And one of the things that was talked about today which uh Doctor Braxton had mentioned was the humanism and that's a, it's, it's really great because we like one of the things that we tried to do in our program.

Speaker 3Is create wins for everybody, wins for the patient, wins for the surgeons, wins for, uh, for all the people involved and the stakeholders involved, and it's part of what we do. The Other thing that we know is most surgeons don't have the time or desire to market themselves on a consistent basis. In fact, most surgeons hate making sales calls. Um, that's not what they're trained to do.

Speaker 3And thus we take the, the patient promise or the uh the surgical outcome warranty and we help amplify that message and differentiate it, but we also do some Other things.

Speaker 3Surgical stewardship combines the functional component of a surgical outcome warranty with a comprehensive Marketing plan. That Marketing plan actually has a lot of elements to it, but we'll just touch on some one is we, we create, we partner with some people who do this, we create your unique brand.

Speaker 3That establishes you as a specialist within your specialty.

Speaker 3We design narratives of a distinct message about you and your practice.

Speaker 3And it differentiates you to both patients and referral sources that your competition cannot match, and it's very effective and it's based on the foundational component of the patient promise, but we also go further than that, we actually have.

Speaker 3A, uh, a structured, uh, outreach program that helps amplify your unique message and that goes in two distinct paths. One of those is patient outreach, and that is how do we establish and optimize your Social Media profiles. Uh, there's weekly content that we use that's very structured, that illustrates your brand and differentiates you, yet it's still customized. We use professionally filmed video highlighting your brand.

Speaker 3We use that in a number of different areas and we have patient video messaging and a lot of Other things that are already structured and done. Now, we can't do that for you as a surgeon.

Speaker 3Uh, as a whole, we need your participation, but we have the structure program that is highly efficient and very, very effective. And then we have a second path that they work in tandem, and that's referral outreach. Same thing, it's video messaging, it's film using film to brand yourself too, but it now it's geared toward your potential referral sources, print print collateral QR code messaging.

Speaker 3And then we have a very extensive lengthen, uh, outreach program that actually the whole thought process is to establish you as a thought leader in your community and all that empowering the ability to attract more ideal patients.

Speaker 3There's a 3rd platform to the surgical stewardship program, and that's called surgical outcome Reimbursement, and we'll, anybody who has questions about this can contact us and we can go into some detail of how it works.

Speaker 3But adding a surgical outcome warranty to your implants creates risk for the insurance companies that actually underwrite that warranty.

Speaker 3The insurance companies want to correct, uh, want to contract directly with you, the surgeon, to, to, to participate in the risk pool and thus offer you an incentive to manage that risk and to increase expected outcomes.

Speaker 3And we show you how that added risk can earn your practice additional Reimbursement when patients experience those positive outcomes. There's some detail to that. It's very effective. We've been doing this for about 7 years. It's uh efficient, and it's, um, it's, it's a game changer for most Practices and how they look at it and how they market themselves and what they do. There's a 4th platform called Data pro Data and analytics.

Speaker 3It's actually a partnership we have with patient IQ where they've customized a program and it's a turnkey solution for collecting preoperative, intraoperative, and postoperative data from your patients in the operating room environment and this is data that you own and you can compare yourself to their national registry and we know that that's very valuable and how, how it's used and how it works. And as we move into the future about Reimbursement and outcome issues, this becomes very important for most of our surgeon partners that we work with.

Speaker 3If you believe in the philosophy that trust is your currency.

Speaker 3And reputation is your bank account.

Speaker 3Then the surgical stewardship programs does provide solutions to improve both. And as we talked about in the beginning,

Speaker 3One of the things that we use, we look at ourselves as, as being different. We, uh, we changed the role and function that industry partners should play.

Speaker 3In helping Spine surgeons in our case, build their practice. If you have any questions, you can use the QR QR code that's there or if you want to reach out to us and learn some more about what we do. It's vastly different than

Speaker 3Uh, Other programs that exist, but an outcome warranty is the foundational component that makes that very different and very effective.

Speaker 1I think it's interesting because, you know, the Awake spine surgery is a patient outcome-driven movement, right? That's what essentially is driving all this. But what's been challenging is that you don't necessarily get reimbursed more for doing Awake spine surgery, not yet, at least with the insurance companies. But I think what you've guys have done successfully is really tie in a Business model around paying for outcomes.

Speaker 1Which is what the goal is, what we're trying to do, but no one's really been able to figure out how to basically pay you more for uh doing better. I mean,

Speaker 1I always say this, that I'm a capitalist. I like to incentivize the good and penalize the bad, and if you're more, if you incentivize more good, you get more good and you get less bad, ideally, but in our US archaic system, you get paid either way.

Speaker 1And so ultimately, at the end of the day, we have to figure out, we have to move towards that direction. That's how capitalism works. That's what works so well in this economy. So I congratulate both of you for really putting together a Business model that really gets us closer to that goal over here.