Dr. Suzette Sutherland
speaker
230 appearances
4 recordings
1 series
first heard Aug 2024
last heard Jan 2025
Dr. Suzette Sutherland’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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Appearances
Thank you so much. why are these the most important things, right? They're pretty specialized there, the questions. And I see why they're in themselves important, but there are lots of questions that weren't asked. I mean, so the first one, you know, dealing, there are two buckets I saw, endourology bucket and then the sexual health bucket. The first one was, you know, the use of double J stents.
that so many practicing urologists really prefer using double J stents when they do even a simple ureteroscopic procedure, they'd still lead up a stent rather than doing it stentless, right? That not many people in the country are doing it stentless yet. And was there anything in the data that, or your other discussions about why that was an important question? Yeah, to have that answered? Yeah.
Well, that makes sense. There's always a rotating pecking order, right? And then to your point about newer technology, there were questions about how many people are using homium lasers versus if they're going to invest in some new laser. Are they transitioning to the thulium laser? I thought that was very interesting. You know, almost half.
of people were saying they were going to have a new purchase in the future and it was gonna be Thulium. So just showing the utilization of the newer technology that's here. So, and another interesting thing in the endourology bucket was how many people are using strings on their stents. Now I didn't see a timeline associated with that.
I know personally that determines for me if I'm gonna leave a string or not. You know, if I think it's gonna stay in 24 or 48 hours, string it. But if not, I'm not gonna have a string on it. But how many people really preferred doing a cystoscopic scent removal in the office rather than leaving any kind of a string? And even those who had a string still having the provider remove it, right?
Having them come into the office so that the provider can pull the string. It was about 25% versus 20% of the patient pulling it. So I think things like that are really interesting to see different practice patterns that people are doing. Is there anything more that you're looking at that you're going to use this data for?
So that was a question I had. Who has access to this data? If they have an idea, is it hard for them to get some of the raw data to be able to look at? Or is there oversight of their utilization of the raw data?
Yeah, those are wonderful opportunities. I love what you said about I think the word you said is democratize the data. I love that. And it's also provides her more transparency. We know that with different statistics, people can manipulate data to say what it needs to say or things get left out. And this really provides for the ultimate transparency. And that's so important.
So let's look again at a little bit more of some practice patterns that are happening. One big topic is telehealth, right? And then how much that people are doing in the area of telehealth. There was so much during time of COVID that But now that we've all backed away from that, what's really happening in that domain?
How many people are still doing telehealth and how many people are willing to if they're not going to be reimbursed the same as an in-office visit?
To that point, telehealth crossing state lines, right? I know here I am in the state of Washington and we, during the time of COVID, could cross state lines. We're part of the big whammy region, Wyoming, Alaska, Montana, you know, what's all the W's? Washington, Idaho. There, I got them. But suddenly now we're not right and we won't be reimbursed.
And it's like now you've established care for some patients. You can continue with established, but the new, you know, it and it just seems unethical to some degree, at least in my opinion. Right. And so we have a service that we're able to provide to people. We should be able to. do that without being penalized just because we won't be paid for it.
That just seems so, yeah, people that are championing for this policy work, doing advocacy work, it's so important. Thank you for doing that, for sure. Yeah. And then the idea, too, about the telehealth, if it's the reimbursement for it is reduced, how many people will actually then say, I'll still do it? There was less than 20 percent said yes. The vast majority said no way. Right.
A few people said maybe. But for the most part, I mean, it is our livelihood, too. And so it's hard. You set up that precedent. Yeah. And now that's what you're doing all day long and not getting paid for it. So yeah, working with the policy changers is what's so important. And also another one is the big burden of prior authorizations, right?
So we could just say real quickly, maybe Dr. North, you can speak to that. How many people that that really involves and what that means if we look at overall staff shortage issues, right? Absolutely.
I really wanted to highlight a number that you said. You said it real quickly, but you said, you know, 54%, but, you know, more than half of urologists. It's not only a headache to the urologists and to their staff, but they said it affects the clinical outcome of the patient, right? And so when we put it in those terms, too, my goodness. We definitely need to make some changes.
So that's great data to have. That's wonderful. Yeah. And then if we look at the staff shortage, I was astounded. Of course, we all experience it to some degree in whatever kind of practice we're in. But what I was really astounded to see is that real high percentages of vacancies, not only of nurses and support staff, 56% vacancies or difficulties filling vacancies.
positions for nurses, for MAs or LPNs, same, close to 50%. Urologists, hard-filling urologist positions too, the MD, 55%. That one was for me a real eye-opener. So that brings me to this idea too about, you know, where are we sending our trainees? How are we training them? Where are they going? setting them up for success to go into some more rural communities.
And then also, I didn't see any specific questions about locums. And, you know, again, what this looks like for our urological workforce, as I think more people are just really jumping into the locums pool for a variety of reasons, right? And then what that makes our urological workforce look like. Yeah. So I know that's a hefty one. Locums is on our radar. Don't worry. Yeah. Yeah.
Locums and private equity are both on our radar. It'll be on next year's. Yeah. And then the other thing is that with all these shortages of the acknowledgement that 82 percent of urologists said that they actually significantly utilize support staff such as a nurse practitioner or a P.A., So there you go. In order to keep me moving, this is what I need.
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