Dr. Robert Mayle is a board-certified orthopedic surgeon who specializes in hip and knee replacement surgeries with California Pacific Orthopaedics. He obtained his medical degree from Drexel University in Philadelphia, completed his residency in orthopedic surgery at Stanford, a fellowship in spine surgery at the University of Miami, and a fellowship in total joint replacement surgeries at RUSH in Chicago. He has published numerous articles and book chapters, presented at national and international conferences, and performed award-winning research.
Casey Smith is a distributor of Johnson and Johnson DePuy total joints. Prior to this, he was in corporate sales at Dell and education solutions at Apple. He’s based in Dallas Fort Worth, Texas, and has been in this in his current role for over 14 years. He has worked with some high-volume orthopedic surgeons in the area and has won numerous awards in his role.
Mayle: This is my 10th year in practice out of San Francisco and Marin. I do primarily hip replacement. About 70% of my practice is hip replacement with 30% being knee. I’ve been working with DocSpera, and I think now for five years. Five or six years.
Casey: I’ve been with DePuy since 2009, so about 14 years. Do hips and knees, a little bit of shoulders. Been with DocSpera probably going on six years now.
Dr. Mayle: There’s a lot that goes into all the events that lead up to surgery. So we have to see patients in the office. We operate on them in the ASCs or the hospitals. … Once we actually see somebody to indicate them for surgery, the workflow in the past would be to fill out a surgical form, give it to a surgical scheduler, and then at some point in time have to contact my rep and review the x-rays and the equipment that would be needed. … It was not necessarily reliable. … And I think DocSpera when they approached us, their solution was perfect. … We would frequently be templating the day before. And so it’s very nice to have gotten away from that.
Casey: In the past, it was kind of all over the place. There was no direct communication and kind of accountability of who was seeing what and we had no access to the x-rays. … Now with DocSpera, we have the sizes. We can look at a case a week in advance and figure out what needs to be there. … Now you can go case-specific and really kind of slim down what you’re traveling with, and it really makes your day a lot more efficient.
Dr. Mayle: When I first came out of fellowship, we were printing out films, putting a film up on the whiteboard, getting the tracing papers from the company, right? And then like, manually tracing out the template. … Now what happens? It truly is seamless. I can schedule the surgery. DocSpera technology will mine our EMR, so it knows my schedule. It mines the PACs system, pulls the pre-op film or the most recent film, and then sends it to DePuy, where DePuy will actually template the case for me and let us know the size it is expected to be and also differences in leg length.
Casey: … So I can do the work on my end as well and make sure I have the right equipment there and actually help out as well. And I can be part of the team rather than just a rep on the side. I can be part of the care team.
Casey: Well, it’s twofold, right? It’s space because being an orthopedic rep, you’ve kind of got to drive a big car. … By being able to dial in the sizing it really gets to shrink how much I actually need to bring to the case. And it actually takes a lot less for my distributor that has vans running all over the city. … I know what the sizes are going to be within one or two, and we’re about almost a 99% hit rate on that.
Dr. Mayle: I think that ability to have a tech platform that can seamlessly mine data, that can tie up loose ends, that can coordinate care from the office through the post-op care, including the site of surgery, is going to be where we see things go.
Dr. Mayle: Everybody that performs surgery could utilize this type of technology. … I think this could be used across the spectrum and all surgical subspecialties.
Casey: I don’t see how you could benefit less. I would feel blind without it. I’ve been using it long enough that it’s part of my routine. … It frees up a lot of time and allows me to go out and visit my doctors and take care of things I need to take care of that aren’t just moving and shipping instruments.
Dr. Mayle: It’s not hard for me. I hit the button. It does a face recognition, boom! Pops up, click the calendar, click the patient, click the PDF. … Now it’s all on my phone. It’s amazingly efficient.
Dr. Mayle: Any orthopedic surgeon scheduling cases that might require implants or have specific needs, I think can benefit from it. Anybody that schedules anything that wants to lessen the amount of paper that they write can benefit from it.
Casey: For the ASC, it’s super important because I can’t overwhelm them with instrumentation. … Let’s say I bring 20 trays to a case that’s just going to overwhelm them. I’ve broken my trays down to size specifics. So I can take a total knee – used to be seven, eight trays. I’ve gotten it down to three, so I can show up and do three knees with nine trays
Dr. Mayle: My return on investment for this is my life back. So if I’m going to do six cases in a day and if I was templating it myself, that’s going to take me, with the way that this old software program worked, would take me 20 to 30 minutes at least. … So it’s just a huge time savings. It’s fast, it’s efficient, it’s reliable.
Casey: It just saves a ton of time. It’s more about the time saving, basically, because it allows me to become part of the team