Celebrating Advancements in Orthopedics: Syracuse Orthopedic Specialists’ One-Day Surgery Center

“We opened our same-day surgery center in April 2019,” says James Alan Lemley, MD, President of the Surgery Center and Orthopedic Surgeon with Syracuse Orthopedic Specialists. “It’s given us the capability to do things that were previously only available to patients in hospital settings.”

Syracuse Orthopedic Specialists has offered outpatient surgery services for two decades, but as trends in orthopedics suggest outpatient procedures will become the standard of care, expanding to the new, state-of-the-art center was necessary to continue providing excellent care.

“There is a movement in orthopedics to make procedures traditionally inpatient-only, such as spinal surgeries or total joint replacements, into outpatient procedures,” says Brett Greenky, MD, President of Syracuse Orthopedic Specialists. “The advantages of same-day surgery for orthopedic procedures are significant.”

Benefits of Same-Day Total Joint Replacement

Total joint replacements, in particular, have shifted toward outpatient versus in-hospital procedures in recent years, and surgeons at Syracuse Orthopedic Specialists were the first to embrace the trend. Physicians use equipment and technology in outpatient settings that were previously considered only fit for hospital settings, allowing patients to receive hospital-quality care without spending several days in the facility. The practice of outpatient procedures lowers medical costs for patients and insurance companies, discounting the prices at an average of roughly 40%.

“Studies also show that the risk of infection goes down with the amount of time spent in the operating room,” Dr. Lemley says. “We’ve created a team of physicians, anesthesiologists, nurses and scrub technicians who know how to perform surgeries as efficiently and optimally as possible to minimize patient risk and complication.”