Recording – 08-02-2024 06:58:18

00:03 This is Marc Swiontkowski who is here at the annual meeting of the 20th Century Orthopedic Association. And we're in our second day here in Lake Geneva at the Grand Geneva resort. And we're interviewing members of the organization. And this morning I have the pleasure of speaking with Cliff Jones at an old friend, probably 25 years or more, formerly of Grand Rapids, now of the Phoenix area, a leader in orthopedics in the state. And Cliff is a brand new member who last night got through the hazing part of the initiation of this organization, which is a skit, and delivered his lines with great aplomb and somehow snuck through and got conducted into the organization. So this is Cliff's first meeting, nominated by our close colleague Brad Henley. And Cliff, what are your early thoughts about this body, this orthopedic group?

01:12 I think it's a great group of, I would say accomplished people, at minimum, who have seemed to have left ego accomplishments at the door and seem to have come in with, I guess, a greater good purpose as a group rather than an individual purpose of things. And I can't believe I survived the hazing last night without getting a robe on and carrying candles also. But the group of people are quite accomplished from mid later career to retired after amazing career, including in their 90s and still being very productive. Maybe not from a clinical standpoint, but definitely from a mental standpoint concerning engagement and so forth. Yeah, I think yesterday morning and the competency of residents and training was a great example of 20 people jumping to the podium about how we can make that system that seems to be very amorphous and gray into a little more accomplished and directed to help residents become successful doctors.

02:27 Yeah, A little more data driven and having metrics rather than time and rank type of thing.

02:33 But also engagement of the clinicians, not only of the residents, but also engagement of the clinicians of where you're falling short and where you can get better.

02:41 Yeah, Direct and immediate feedback kind of thing. Yeah. So we were talking earlier. You have some thoughts about family? We were chatting about the various families. Maybe you can just share with the listener what that's about, Cliff.

02:59 Sure. I think you can look at that at many different levels. And clearly your nuclear family at home and so forth is paramount. I think Covid really refocused that for many people. And if not, I don't know where you were, but I think that really focused family, family balance, engagement, communication to be very good. I know that also we had Covid parties. In other words, we had a. At the end of the Cul de sac, people had their chairs six feet apart and neighbors who never knew each other came out and engaged, which was I thought extremely important and really fulfilling as a neighborhood. Again, people were all there of different backgrounds, diversities and so forth. Extremely pleasant. I think the next is you have your community and that can be also from a hospital standpoint or medical group that you're in. And that's great. I think it provides great care direction. But also I think there's a larger family which is the orthopedic family, which is, you know, nationally to a certain degree and also for a lot of organizations in US it's internationally. In addition, I think a great example is a situation in Ukraine where many countries and people have helped out the clinicians there. Orthopedics mainly have been overwhelmed with, you know, daily barrage of horrors to help these people out. I think also it comes about of the fact that we as clinicians really look at, talked about earlier numbers and so forth. How many cases have you done and so forth systems. Take a look at how many cases have you done on money that you brought in return on investment. I think learning early, very early from Brad Henley also were many components of standardization and implant costs which are on the other end of our duty to provide value based healthcare, which is quality over cost. And I think many times that goes missing. And again, I learned that very early from Brad concerning the importance of both ends of the spectrum when it comes to health care and costs. Also, I think standardization to a certain degree is extremely helpful to reduce variation. And when you reduce variation, you reduce errors and that hopefully should affect patients with less errors, less return to the hospital readmissions and so forth.

05:56 Yeah, it's an important thing. We used to believe that as far as our ethical duties in health care was to the individual patient. But it's come about, I think, since the turn of the millennia that we really have a duty to society to manage more wisely the resources that we consume in caring for them and to try to participate at the community level to distribute care more equitably. And cost control and variation control is an important part of this. So what are your anticipations for membership in this organization? Does it seem like this is something that you're going to want to come to every year based on this early experience?

06:50 I do, and I think that's from two standpoints. I think yesterday we saw that where I would never attend an oncology lecture and we had three oncology lectures that were not out there. That's what people do today. Concerning some AI driven diagnostics, some leg lengthening procedures and so forth which I would never see. And again it gets into we're community of orthopedic surgeons and for me as a trauma surgeon some of these things come into play in terms of post traumatic leg length inequalities and so forth. So I think it's great to see all the different specialties. As you know, I went through the leadership fellows program that we were taught we're a north peak surgeon with a subspecialty in such and such field and I think we've become very subspecially driven only and this provides a greater breadth I think in terms of communication. I think the other thing talking about that also was Lanny Johnson afterwards gave us kind of a pep talk after we went through our ritual and so forth induction and talking about how people here are very accomplished and leaders and so forth and or mentors for a lot of people and how this kind of creates almost an equal playing field of engagement. And as he talked about friendship and from that friendship I think you get good communication. And I think the more we communicate the more we find we're similar instead of being different. And I probably hopefully not too much of an issue but I think that is probably more true stated from our political system than anything else where I think people communicate more. I think a lot of these divisions would be less and we can get more accomplished.

08:50 Yeah, I think that's a great point and this is a wonderful forum to not only create and build those friendships which extend far beyond these annual meetings, but also to stay up with the whole field of orthopedic surgery which is quite broad. I have often told administrators when trying to explain how we are a different surgical specialty that we're a little less than 3% of the doctors with 40% of the CPT codes and they seem to understand that that really does reflect the breadth of our field. It's a wonderful forum to be able to keep up so well. Cliff, welcome to the organization. I'm sure you're going to be a major contributor for decades and congratulations on walking through the red hot coals of this kit and have a great rest of the meeting.

09:44 Thanks Marc I appreciate it.