Roger Hartl, MD

Then we had two surgeons, myself, somebody else.

We had one of the pain management guys, one of the PM&R physiatry doctors.

And a physical therapist and a neurologist, actually.

And we all, you know, we were like similar age group.

We all had an interest in spine.

And we decided to meet up once a week and discuss cases that we had seen in clinic where we had some questions or we wanted input.

And that's really how the Spine Center started in our case here 20 years ago, 20 plus years ago.

And then it slowly evolved.

And then we decided to see actually patients together.

So we moved our clinic schedules around and we found a location where we could actually see patients together within the hospital.

And then slowly, and then we tracked volumes.

We tracked patient volumes, surgery volumes.

We could show that it increased our productivity.

And that's how the hospital started paying attention.

And then slowly you get the hospital on board.

Yeah.

So it takes a long time.

It's a slow process, but that's kind of how it worked in our case.

Yeah, I mean, I think AI penetrates every aspect of our lives as individuals and as surgeons.

And the key is to try to make it, you know, make it safe, make it effective, and to make sure you don't lose really some of the principles of how we take care of patients, of course.