Less than 2 weeks before the 5th Annual Safety in Spine Surgery Summit on March 13, NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital received its first COVID patient. These were the early days of an unprecedented strain on the city’s healthcare system. NYC is still fighting a hard battle every day and continues to rise to the challenge.

Despite taking the necessary step to cancel the live Safety Summit in March, we were still committed to providing top-tier educational resources to the spine surgery community. Our local faculty gathered for discussion and our long-distance faculty recorded their own presentations. In the words of Dr. Flynn & Dr. Vitale, it’s more a mission than a course. Thanks to our faculty and supporters, we’re now pleased to present these to you as a free Safety Summit Online CME video series.

Surgeons, PAs, and Nurses can earn 4.2 hours of CME/CE credit by viewing this series of lectures and panel discussions. Learn from experts in spine surgery, neuromonitoring, medical device approval, malpractice, and more. Plus, gain invaluable insight from Stephen Harden of LifeWings, a leader in transforming patient safety programs around the country. We’ve also provided the full text of the outstanding abstracts submitted for this meeting. In addition, you can review the E-Poster presentations, representing some of the best new research in our field. This CME-accredited course is available through February 2021.

We hope you’ll take advantage of this year’s on-demand learning experience. We look forward to joining together in person again for the 6th Annual Safety Summit in Spring 2021. Until then—stay healthy. Stay safe.

Click here for more information.

Less than 2 weeks before the 5th Annual Safety in Spine Surgery Summit on March 13, NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital received its first COVID patient. These were the early days of an unprecedented strain on the city’s healthcare system. NYC is still fighting a hard battle every day and continues to rise to the challenge.

Despite taking the necessary step to cancel the live Safety Summit in March, we were still committed to providing top-tier educational resources to the spine surgery community. Our local faculty gathered for discussion and our long-distance faculty recorded their own presentations. In the words of Dr. Flynn & Dr. Vitale, it’s more a mission than a course. Thanks to our faculty and supporters, we’re now pleased to present these to you as a free Safety Summit Online CME video series.

Surgeons, PAs, and Nurses can earn 4.2 hours of CME/CE credit by viewing this series of lectures and panel discussions. Learn from experts in spine surgery, neuromonitoring, medical device approval, malpractice, and more. Plus, gain invaluable insight from Stephen Harden of LifeWings, a leader in transforming patient safety programs around the country. We’ve also provided the full text of the outstanding abstracts submitted for this meeting. In addition, you can review the E-Poster presentations, representing some of the best new research in our field. This CME-accredited course is available through February 2021.

We hope you’ll take advantage of this year’s on-demand learning experience. We look forward to joining together in person again for the 6th Annual Safety Summit in Spring 2021. Until then—stay healthy. Stay safe.

Click here for more information.

 

ATTENTION:

The NYP Leadership and Dr. Vitale have made the difficult decision to cancel the 5th Annual Safety in Spine Surgery Summit. This is due to both hospital policies as well as following the CDC current guidelines to limit gatherings of 25 or more people.  Many of our faculty are subject to restrictions on travel and business conferences as well due to COVID-19.

We are still committed to communicating the Safety in Spine Surgery Summit message worldwide.  We are working on filming some of the key content to be made available on-line as a CME module. More details will be available soon, but it will likely be later this spring that those videos are available at the Safety in Spine Surgery website.

If you have already registered for the course, please contact us regarding your refund options and cancel any hotel and travel arrangements.

 

5th Annual Safety in Spine Surgery Summit Details:

Chair: Michael G. Vitale, MD, MPH

Co-chairs:

  • John M. Flynn, MD
  • Roger Härtl, MD
  • Rajiv K. Sethi, MD

First do no harm!

Statistics still show unacceptably high numbers of medical and surgical errors. Join us to learn from a diverse faculty about safety and quality advances—plus tips and tools to help us all improve.

Spine surgeons, members of spine surgery teams, OR directors, hospital executives, and more will benefit from this program, and most importantly, so will all of our patients.

Call for Abstracts

Abstract Submission closed on December 13.

Registration

Pre-Course Registration: $95

Main Course Registration:
Surgeons: $575
Residents/Fellows/Allied Health: $375
Healthcare Admin/Corporate: $675
Late Fee (After Feb. 11): $75

The Thursday optional pre-course will be held at:
The Warwick New York Hotel
65 W. 54th St.
New York, NY 10019
Map >

All Friday sessions will be held at:
The Heart Conference Center
173 Fort Washington Avenue
New York, NY 10463
Map >

Shuttle service for participants will run between the Warwick and The Heart Conference Center on Friday morning and evening. Further details will be provided in registration confirmation materials.

 

Hotel Accommodations

S3P Meeting at Warwick Hotel, NY

The Warwick New York Hotel
65 W 54th St.
New York, NY 10019
Map >

The deadline for hotel reservations at our group rate has passed. To inquire about available rooms and rates at the Warwick, please contact Francesca Acosta at (212) 314-7752 or facosta@warwickhotels.com.

CME

9.5 hours available

Hear what leaders in the spine industry have to say about the Safety in Spine Surgery Summit.

Michael Vitale, MD, MPH, Chief of Pediatric Orthopedics and Pediatric Spine Surgery at the Columbia University Medical Center, shares the motivation behind the S3P meeting. In addition, Drs. Sethi and Lenke explain what makes the Summit so unique. Learn why it is an essential meeting for spine surgeons, surgical spine team members, hospital execs responsible for patient safety, and more. Watch the video below.

"This meeting is the most valuable for any practicing surgeon." —Rajiv Sethi, MD

"You'll provide better service to your patients." —Lawrence Lenke, MD

We are excited to be convening the 4th Annual Safety in Spine Surgery Summit on April 26, 2019 in New York City, NY! In addition to the fantastic roster of speakers, we look forward to sharing the following:

  • Latest in Best Practices for Safety in Spine Surgery
  • Using tools to reduce variability and improve predictability of achieving positive outcomes
  • Discussing the importance of safety on the macroeconomic level
  • Designing Talent, culture and team to achieve best outcomes
  • Protecting surgeons and providers
  • Discussing value-based care in spine with all stakeholders

We look forward to seeing you at the Safety in Spine Surgery Summit!

Register Here >

More Information >

View Full Brochure >

Dr. Michael Vitale on 3rd spine surgery safety summit: "The appetite for information regarding safety in spine surgery is seemingly endless."

Excerpt from Becker's Spine Review | Written by Megan Wood | May 14, 2018

Back in 2012, Michael Vitale, MD, chief of pediatric spine and scoliosis surgery at New York City-based NewYork Presbyterian Hospital/Columbia Orthopedics, realized that there was a great opportunity to improve the safety of spine surgery. To call attention to the topic, he collaborated with 24 national experts to set goals for reducing surgical site infections after spine surgery. This small forum grew into the first Safety in Spine Surgery Summit in 2016; the second annual summit occurred in 2017 with a crowd of 200 attendees.

"The appetite for information regarding safety in spine surgery is seemingly endless," said Dr. Vitale, who chairs the summit. "People are really excited about the responsibility to do better."

Summit Co-Chair Lawrence Lenke, MD, surgeon-in-chief of The Spine Hospital at NewYork-Presbyterian/Allen and chief of spinal deformity and the orthopedic surgery spine division at Columbia University Medical Center, agreed, emphasizing the critical role safety plays in the spine industry: "[Spine safety] is a topic that has to be priority number one for physicians and surgeons. It is a very unique discipline of surgery where complications are real, often far too common and can have devastating adverse effects on outcomes."

The 3rd Annual Safety in Spine Surgery Summit occurred April 20 in New York City. The summit goes beyond the talked-about technical complications, such as neurologic deficit, and hits on the less obvious culprits — system failures, siloed teams and weak cultures. Each year, the summit's theme changes, with this year's titled, "Toward New Rules of Engagement for an Increasingly Complex Spine World."

"Dr. Vitale is saying [patient safety] is a science, as important as doing an operation," said Paul C. McCormick, MD, medical director of the Spine Center at NYP/CUMC and a co-chair of the summit. "How you set up the operations and engage people are all important things that can be managed, assessed, evaluated and made better."

Each summit includes a pre-course, where participants focus on a deliverable. This year, the group finalized a best practice guideline for Halo Gravity Traction, a procedure designed to decrease the curvature degree in children with idiopathic scoliosis. Previous efforts have focused on developing best practices for infection, neurological safety and wrong level spine surgery, and are available at www.safetyinspinesurgery.com.

This year, 20-plus faculty shared lessons from micro to macro, with discussion focused on how to optimize individuals, teams and the healthcare delivery system as a whole.

One of the questions I often received prior to the first annual spine safety summit in 2016 is “why organize another Spine Surgery conference?” My answer is inevitably, “how could we not?”

The time could not be more urgent. At every talk I give, I always like to put the audience in the right mindset, which is “how will the next patient be harmed?” Somewhere out there, there’s a patient coming to your waiting room or in a cab or on a plane that may be harmed. The question isn’t if, but when.

In reality, no one is safe, the patient or the surgeon, including the emotional toll that comes from potentially harming a patient.

As a field, we are not doing well. Even if we pride ourselves with 99.9% positive outcomes, we are still left in the dust by others who are doing better. As a framing picture, we would find this unacceptable if:

  • Amazon failed to deliver 1,600 parcels each day
  • USPS lost 506,000 pieces of mail each day
  • 1,019 surgeries went wrong every month

We always need to ask ourselves, how far would you be willing to go to avoid harm? Often times, the answer isn’t from punishing physicians and nurses. It’s not an issue of bad physicians or nurses harming patients, but a poor system setting up good physicians and nurses that eventually harms patients. Even the most technically skilled and fantastic of surgeons can’t do a great job, unless they have the infrastructure to support them and a team surrounding them with good communication. More and more, with lessons from high reliability organizations such as aviation and nuclear power as well as from the peer-reviewed literature, we are learning that over focusing on the concepts of individual skills undervalues the reality that care is a result of the entire episode of care, requiring a systematic approach to managing everything within the realm of influence, from preoperative access to recovery and rehabilitation.

Just like Jim Reason’s timeless model, the Swiss Cheese Model of Medical Error, if we think about all of the elements of risk, host, technique, systems, and culture, then we realize that medical error and complications occur only when all of the holes line up just right.

As we start this blog, I am hopeful that the Safety in Spine Surgery Project (S3P) will evolve into a platform where we can engage the wisdom of the entire industry to shrink the critical holes that too often lead to poor outcomes for our patients:

  • Variability
  • Lack of Infrastructure
  • Individual Thinking & Decision Making
  • Lack of Information in a Data Rich System
  • Poor Culture

S3P will provide an infrastructure and platform in which we can work together to tackle some of these issues throughout spine surgery and hopefully implement strategies across the board. But we need participation and buy in at ever level, from industry partners, hospitals, peers and colleagues, and each individual physician. Patient safety and quality starts with physicians, but it doesn’t end there.

This is such an exciting time and we would love your feedback on how S3P can take quality in spine surgery to the next level. In future blog posts, we’ll talk more about some of the frameworks for change we envision and the efforts that have evolved as a result. We look forward to hearing from you.