Dr. Wesley Stepp is a resident at the University of North Carolina’s Department of Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery. UNC is a national leader in training the next generation of ear, nose and throat surgeons and Dr. Stepp brings an interesting perspective to this kind of work.

Not just because his first exposure to otolaryngology was having sinus surgery in his teens, which proved life changing and set him on his eventual academic and professional course. But also because in his work today as a senior resident, he’s seen firsthand how single-use endoscopy technology has impacted his practice in several ways — from workflow and efficiency to information sharing and medical decision making to patient education.

We talked about all this and more with Dr. Stepp, who graduated from the University of North Carolina School of Medicine in 2019 and who will take his practice to the military soon. Dr. Stepp is an Ambu consultant.

Show notes:

Bio: Dr. Wesley Stepp

Dr. Stepp’s PubMed Listing

Video: Simplifying FEES Exams with the aScope 4 RhinoLaryngo Slim

Endoscopy Insights homepage

The conventional wisdom in interventional pulmonology has long been that reusable bronchoscopes perform better than their single-use counterparts, but new research counters that thinking.

A recent study, part of a poster presentation at the World Congress for Bronchology and Interventional Pulmonology (WCBIP) 2022 in Marseille, France, found that three of four single-use flexible bronchoscopes that were tested performed better in flexion and extension than reusable competitors.

The latest single-use flexible bronchoscopes, according to the study’s authors, are a significant advance­ment over prior generations.

One of those authors is Dr. Jonathan Kurman and he’s our guest on the latest episode of Endoscopy Insights. Dr. Kurman is an assistant professor of medicine at the Medical College of Wisconsin and the director of interventional pulmonology for the Froedtert & Medical College of Wisconsin (MCW) health network.

He completed an interventional pulmonology fellowship at the University of Chicago and pulmonary & critical care training at the Medical College of Wisconsin. He is board certified in interventional pulmonology, internal medicine, pulmonary medicine and critical care.

Disclosure: Ambu provided funding for the study’s evaluation and testing, and Dr. Kurman is an Ambu consultant.

Show notes:

Poster, “A Comparison of Single-Use Bronchoscopes and Reusable Bronchoscopes for Interventional Pulmonology Applications”

Single-Use Endoscopy, “Study: Single-Use Bronchoscopes Show Better Flexion Than Reusables”

World Congress for Bronchology and Interventional Pulmonology 2022

Bio: Dr. Jonathan Kurman

Endoscopy Insights homepage

Dr. Marybeth Spanarkel describes GI endoscopy as a labor of love. You can hear the passion in her voice when she talks about performing a procedure and the gratification that comes from getting an immediate medical answer to the clinical question that’s being asked.

Spanarkel, however, suffered a career-ending neck injury after 28 years in private practice in North Carolina. Without full strength in her right arm, she lost the ability to perform endoscopy procedures and provide those much-needed answers to patients.

That musculoskeletal injury brought her career to an end, but it was the catalyst sending her down a new path — keeping other GI endoscopists from suffering a similar fate by educating them on the unique ergonomics challenges they face.

She discussed that and more in our first conversation for Endoscopy Insights, which you can listen to here. In this episode, we talk more about her career path, her decision to choose clinical practice over academia, her experiences as a female clinical endoscopist and some of the unique challenges she’s faced and overcome.

Show notes:

• Endoscopy Insights: Dr. Marybeth Spanarkel, Part 1
• Q&A: Addressing Ergonomics Challenges in Colonoscopy
• Survey: Are All Endoscopic-Related Musculoskeletal Injuries Created Equal?
• American College of Gastroenterology
• ColoWrap

Healthcare staff shortages, while not new, have spawned a world today where it can take five hours to get an X-ray for a dislocated elbow and another two to get pain medication for the injury. Ambulances sometimes wait eight hours to drop off a patient, and nurses work 12- to 16-hour shifts, without a break.

About 400,000 healthcare workers have left jobs since the start of the novel coronavirus pandemic, according to recent estimates from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. 

Throughout the pandemic, hospitals have had to implement creative approaches to soften staffing shortages. Medical device companies have also gotten innovative. Single-use endoscopes, for example, can help address staffing shortages.

They’re always available. And unlike traditional endoscopes, they don’t require extensive staffing — for preparation, transport, reprocessing, and often direct procedure support. They can be simply used once and discarded.

This dovetails with efforts by hospital administrators to alleviate workflow burdens on healthcare professionals.

These challenges and more were explored as part of a virtual session sponsored by Ambu during Becker’s Hospital Review’s 12th Annual Meeting. We’re highlighting part of that conversation here in this episode of Endoscopy Insights.

Here are the experts you’ll hear from:

• Karen Conway, vice president, healthcare value, GHX
• Brian Howard, director, contract services, Vizient
• Karen Niven, director, performance groups, Premier
• India D. Randerson, vice president, strategic sourcing and procurement to payment, Henry Ford Health
• Steering the conversation is Wes Scruggs, Ambu’s vice president of corporate accounts

Show notes:

• Virtual Session: The Financial Case for Single-Use Endoscopy
• Becker’s Hospital Review: “Strategy: The Financial Case for Single-Use Endoscopy”
• Single-Use Endoscopy: “’Perfect Storm’ of Healthcare Worker Shortages Creates Need to Alleviate Workflow Burdens”
• Upcoming Becker’s virtual events
• Listen: “Calculating the Total Cost of Care”
• Listen: “Leading with Value to the Patient”
• Single-Use Endoscopy webinars page
• Endoscopy Insights show page

Medical device suppliers and group purchasing organizations are teaming to bring new healthcare innovations such as single-use endoscopes to hospitals and health systems.

By creating specific single-use endoscope categories for their members, these healthcare improvement companies can help accelerate the transition from reusable devices to disposable ones. But capitalizing on an opportunity to expand capacity and avoid costly and unnecessary expenses associated with workflow management and possible patient cross-contamination comes down to more than simply making a purchase.

Rather, both sides need to approach these deals as true partnerships, hinging on performance measurements and outcome-based metrics. That was one key takeaway from a conversation that was part of a virtual session sponsored by Ambu as part of Becker’s Hospital  Review’s 12th Annual Meeting.

Here are the experts you’ll hear from in this episode:

• Karen Conway, vice president, healthcare value, GHX
• Brian Howard, director, contract services, Vizient
• Karen Niven, director, performance groups, Premier
• India D. Randerson, vice president, strategic sourcing and procurement to payment, Henry Ford Health
• Steering the conversation is Wes Scruggs, Ambu’s vice president of corporate accounts

Show notes:

• Virtual Session: The Financial Case for Single-Use Endoscopy
• Becker’s Hospital Review: “Strategy: The Financial Case for Single-Use Endoscopy”
• Upcoming Becker’s virtual events
• Listen: Calculating the Total Cost of Care
• Single-Use Endoscopy webinars page
• Endoscopy Insights show page

Transitioning from reusable to single-use endoscopes has obvious infection control benefits and even provides workflow and efficiency advantages — but the financial implications are usually one of the biggest hurdles to implementation.

That’s why it’s important to explore all the variables that go into achieving cost savings with single-use devices and assessing that shift within the context of other healthcare paradigm shifts. In this conversation, four experts do exactly that by exploring the elements that go into calculating the total cost of care and better understanding what they call “the math problem” at the root of this analysis.

This conversation was part of a virtual session sponsored by Ambu as part of Becker’s Hospital
Review’s 12th Annual Meeting. Here are the experts you’ll hear from in this episode:

• Karen Conway, vice president, healthcare value, GHX
• Brian Howard, director, contract services, Vizient
• Karen Niven, director, performance groups, Premier
• India D. Randerson, vice president, strategic sourcing and procurement to payment, Henry Ford

Steering the conversation is Wes Scruggs, Ambu’s vice president of corporate accounts.

Show notes:

• Virtual Session: The Financial Case for Single-Use Endoscopy
• Becker’s Hospital Review: “Strategy: The Financial Case for Single-Use Endoscopy”
• Upcoming Becker’s virtual events
• Single-Use Endoscopy webinars page
• Endoscopy Insights show page

When the U.S. Food and Drug Administration released a letter to healthcare providers in April 2021 announcing its investigation into numerous medical device reports involving reprocessed urological endoscopes, Dr. Seth Bechis and his colleagues set out to learn more about reprocessing and its effectiveness.

They focused on flexible ureteroscopes in their research and found that, while studies assessing the effectiveness of on these specific scopes is limited, their findings line up with recent news about other flexible endoscopes — that a surprising number still harbor protein and other debris even after reprocessing, raising patient safety concerns.

Their findings were published in the journal Urology. We caught up with Dr. Bechis at the American Urological Association’s annual convention in New Orleans to talk more about the study.

Dr. Bechis is a board-certified urologist and member of the comprehensive Kidney Stone Center at UC San Diego Health. Hes’ also an Ambu consultant.

Show notes:

• Bio: Seth Bechis
• Urology: “Reprocessing Effectiveness for Flexible Ureteroscopes: A Critical Look at the Evidence”
• Single-Use Endoscopy: “FDA Investigating Reports of Infections Associated with Reprocessed Urological Endoscopes”
• The FDA’s Letter to Healthcare Providers: Infections Associated with Reprocessed Urological Endoscopes
• Single-Use Endoscopy: “Why Problems with Reprocessing Ureteroscopes ‘Haven’t Gone Away’”
• Endoscopy Insights: Breaking Down the FDA Letter to Healthcare Providers
• Endoscopy Insights Show Page

Matthew Katz was at Weill Cornell Medicine when a chance digital encounter ended up steering him into urology.

“If you had asked me what a urologist did before medical school I probably wouldn’t have been able to answer the question,” he told me self-deprecatingly when we chatted at the American Urological Association’s annual conference in New Orleans.

But a blast email to the entire medical school looking for people interested in robotics research caught Katz’s eye. His background in bioengineering had sparked an interest in doing something medically that was hands on, working with new technology and focusing on minimally invasive procedures.

A next-generation urologist was born.

Today, Katz brings a unique perspective to starting a urology practice. He’s less than a year out of an endourology fellowship, has an MBA and has co-authored research on telemedicine. He also has interesting insights on the emergence of single-use endoscopes and the role they can play in urology practice going forward.

Katz is affiliated with NYU Langone Health and is a clinical assistant professor in the urology department at the NYU Grossman School of Medicine. 

Show notes:

• Bio: Matthew Katz
• Diseases of the Colon & Rectum: “Assessment of Ileostomy Output Using Telemedicine: A Feasibility Trial”
• Single-Use Endoscopy: “5 Things Urologists Were Talking About at AUA 22”
• Single-Use Endoscopy: “How Robotics is Shaping the Future of Urology”
• Endoscopy Insights Show Page