Birthing a Business with Hysterectomies with Dr. Richard Rosenfield

Entrepreneurs are funny creatures. Some seem to be born to innovate and create businesses. Others, like today's guest, create new businesses out of necessity because they can't find a system that works for them. Dr. Rick Rosenfield is an OB/GYN who enjoys gynecology surgery and having the ability to work the way he wants focused on patient outcomes and providing personalized care. He didn't feel that he could do that in his first job with a large health system so he struck out on his own and started doing something no one else had thought to do - outpatient laparoscopic hysterectomies.

What is the advantage of Outpatient Laparoscopic Hysterectomies?

Twenty years ago, the thought of doing a hysterectomy (removal of the uterus) as an outpatient procedure would have gotten you laughed out of the room. But Dr. Rosenfield thought it could be done if you did it laparoscopically and refined the process around medications, anesthesia, and postoperative care. So he built a free standing surgical center and just started doing it. What started as an experiment quickly became a much larger movement within the gynecological surgical realm where laparoscopic hysterectomies are becoming more and more common.

The advantages are obvious with shorter recovery times, resting at home, and significantly reduced costs. Also, by specializing in gynecological surgery he had much larger surgical volumes which led to lower complication rates and improved outcomes as he became much better than the average OB/GYN who might only do 5 hysterectomies per year. By keeping patients out of the hospital he improved patient satisfaction while providing tremendous cost savings to health plans or self insured patients.

What is Pearl Precision Surgery?

After the creation of Pearl Surgical Center in Portland, Oregon, Dr. Rosenfield became connected with large employers looking to decrease their health care costs. Naturally, they saw his surgical center as a solution especially since he had great outcomes. Unfortunately, large national employers couldn't always get their employees all the way out to Portland for surgery so he created Pearl Precision Surgery.

Pearl Precision Surgery matches patients and employers with high volume, quality, and lower cost surgeons in other parts of the country. Now a chain like Albertson's groceries can find solutions for their patients no matter where they are in the US. Dr. John LaGrand from episode 046 of the show is one such example with his work in Grand Rapids, MI. Now, Dr. Rosenfield is hoping to increase the reach of Pearl Precision Surgery into other specialties and further growth by helping connect high quality surgeons to patients in cost effective surgical centers all over the United States.