New spine center opens to help SLO County patients get better back care. ‘A key missing link’
A new medical center aimed at giving Central Coast residents better access to back and spine care has opened in San Luis Obispo.
The Tenet Health Central Coast UCSF Spine Center officially opened Thursday in the medical offices at 35 Casa St., adjacent to Sierra Vista Regional Medical Center.
The new center — the latest step in an ongoing neurological partnership with UCSF Health — represents a “significant addition to healthcare here in San Luis Obispo County,” Tenet Health Central Coast CEO Mark Lisa said.
In an interview ahead of Thursday’s ribbon-cutting ceremony, Dr. Phillip Kissel, medical director of neurosurgery at Sierra Vista Regional Medical Center, told the Tribune the Spine Center was a necessary addition to San Luis Obispo County’s medical scene because “there’s a significant need for people to get help in regards to their spine.”
Back pain is the third most common reason for a doctor’s visit in the United States, according to data shared by Tenet Health Central Coast.
The issue is especially acute in San Luis Obispo County, where about 700 inpatient spine surgeries originate each year, the health care company said.
The local approach to back and spine care has also been a bit “helter skelter,” Kissel said, with numerous independent providers available to address small, specific parts of the health concern — but no overall place to go for full care.
“I felt like we needed to get a little more cohesiveness in the approach to someone that has low-back or neck pain and they need to see a doctor,” he said.
The Spine Center is expected to help local patients receive more specialized spine care that would not only increase their quality of life, but also potentially help them avoid expensive and stressful surgeries in the long-term.
“Surgery is really the last resort,” Kissel said. “People need to exhaust the non-operative modalities (first), and that’s what the Spine Clinic is about.”
Tenet Health CEO: New center is ‘key missing link’ for SLO County patients
During Thursday’s ribbon-cutting ceremony, Lisa said being unable to receive local specialized care for back problems often puts undue financial, physical and emotional stress on patients and their families.
“Why should we be stressed here in San Luis Obispo County?” he said. “If we can help our citizens, if we can help our population – if we can advance medicine into the 21st century here — then we want to be the lead.”
Lisa said the new center will help people “avoid back surgery through innovative healing methods and restoring quality of life throughout integrative therapies.”
Some of the services available at the center include platelet-rich plasma (PRP) injection therapies, electrodiagnostic testing and interruption and blocking techniques to stop pain signals from reaching the brain.
“What the Spine Center represents is a key missing link that we didn’t have before: the triaging of neck and back pain, in order to make our surgeons more efficient, but also to give people the opportunity locally to get some therapies, pre-surgical or alternative surgery therapies,” Lisa said. “We are very excited about our ability to advance medicine here in the county.”
New Spine Center partners with UCSF Health hospital for advanced care
The new center also helps to create a stronger connection between local medical providers and patients and UCSF Health, which is consistently ranked among the top 10 hospitals in the nation, according to its website.
“The primary benefit and the reason it’s happened is because the patients in our community — our people — if they get a problem, they have direct access to one of the top neurosurgical programs in the world,” Kissel said.
He said via the Spine Center, local patients who require more advanced care can be transported directly to UCSF for specialized procedures. Then they can be brought back to San Luis Obispo County where they can “recover in their own community ... rather than being in the city,” he said.
“It allows people to be here in our community, but have that level of neurosurgical care, which is you know, many people live in cities because they’re worried about health care and all that sort of thing,” Kissel added.
The partnership itself is unique — and took some maneuvering to make it happen. .
“There really isn’t another university that I know of, or anyone else knows, that has this kind of relationship with the joint concept of delivering better care and keeping the population as healthy as possible.”
During Thursday’s ceremony, Kissel added that getting the partnership up and running was a slight administrative challenge, but ultimately all came together.
“We wanted to do it so it was seamless,” he said. “They are on our staff, and we are on their staff. ... It’s no small feat.”
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