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There's No Place for 'Dabbling' in Mohs Surgery


 

EXPERT ANALYSIS FROM A MEETING SPONSORED BY THE AMERICAN SOCIETY FOR MOHS SURGERY

SAN DIEGO – If you’re thinking about adding Mohs surgery to your dermatology practice, Dr. Edward Yob recommended that you consider the following question: "Am I willing to commit the time and resources necessary to developing a Mohs practice and do it right?"

Ultimately, your decision "will be based on your experience, how efficient you are, and how interested you are in Mohs surgery," he said at the meeting sponsored by the American Society for Mohs Surgery. "There’s no dabbling in Mohs; you either do it, or you don’t."

He offered the following tips on incorporating Mohs surgery into your existing practice:

Start small. Allow extra time, be careful in your patient selection, and avoid distractions. "You don’t want to do your first few Mohs cases when you have a very busy general dermatology clinic," advised Dr. Yob, who practices dermatology and Mohs surgery in Tulsa, Okla. "Attention to detail is the key to Mohs surgery."

Consider the impact on your practice environment. Do you plan to generate Mohs patients from your practice, or will the cases be generated from other referring physicians? What’s your population base, what are the community practice patterns, and what’s the competition like? "Do you have a Mohs surgeon on every other block?" Dr. Yob asked. "And what’s your surgical experience and that of your team? Are you in an area where managed care is going to reimburse you?"

Be mindful of referral sources. In 1990, when Dr. Yob moved to Oklahoma from Washington, D.C., where he served as an Air Force dermatologist, "there was not a Mohs surgeon on the Eastern side of the state," he recalled. "Primary care physicians are an enormous referral source, especially those who do simple excisions. If they know you’re there to take care of those patients, you’ll build a bond and you’ll have a steady stream of patients to care for."

Dr. Yob emphasized the importance of keeping referring physicians in the loop about the patients they send you. "If another dermatologist sends me a patient and that patient says, ‘While I’m here, do you think you could check out this spot?’ I’ll check with the referring physician first," he explained. "Some of them will say, ‘Take care of whatever the patient needs while they’re there,’ while others will say, ‘Send them back and let me do the biopsy,’ or whatever the case may be. You have to respect that. Ultimately good communication is the key."

Other potential referral sources include colleagues who specialize in the ear, nose, and throat; plastic surgery; general surgery; and ophthalmology. You can also spread the word about your practice by offering to give Mohs-specific lectures to hospital staff or to meetings of church groups or civic groups. In those cases, "emphasize the advantage of Mohs in terms of its high cure rate, the fact that it spares tissue, and the fact that it involves an immediate repair," he said.

What will your backup support be? If a case becomes troublesome beyond your scope of expertise, can you send the patient to the hospital right away and know that he or she will be taken care of? "What about specialty backup in the form of other Mohs surgeons, or experts in pathology, ENT, plastics, radiation oncology, general surgery, neurosurgery, and urology?" he asked. "You need to be able to take advice from your backups."

Will you use an in-house tech or a contracted tech? "If you’re only doing Mohs on a limited basis, a contracted tech works pretty well," Dr. Yob said. "How experienced is your tech? How fast are they? Are they eager to learn?"

Be conservative with patient scheduling. Scheduling patients depends on your volume, how many rooms you have dedicated to Mohs, your surgical experience, and the experience of your team. "If you think one Mohs case will take an hour, schedule the time for 2 hours," Dr. Yob recommended. He takes a complexity-based approach to scheduling in which "1" is a minimally complex case, "2" is a moderately complex case, and "3" is a highly complex case "that is going to take you some time and is going to be tough."

Dr. Yob said that he had no relevant financial conflicts to disclose.

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