Safety & Values Committee Update

Rajiv Sethi, MD
Safety and Value Committee Chair

The Safety and Value Committee has had a productive year thus far. The Committee was involved with the planning and execution of the Pre-Meeting Course in Prague focused on the topic of risk stratification. This course tied together international, pediatric, and adult themes in the field of risk stratification and was well received.

There will also be a section of an issue of the Journal of Spine Deformity devoted to this topic in the near future. Dr. Sethi and Dr. Lonstein will be contacting experts in specific topic areas in the arena of risk stratification. 

This committee is also working closely with the chairs of the Spine Safety Summit which held its annual meeting in New York City on February 10, 2017. Prior to the meeting there was a mixing of study groups on February 9 on the topics of infection prevention, dashboards and risk severity scores, where pediatric and adult study group members worked together to enhance forward progress. This meeting also allowed cross pollination between multiple SRS committees and members on the subject of safety in spine surgery.

Members of this committee are involved with important international efforts in enhancing spine safety. Recently, the Association of Spine Surgeons of India asked for Safety and Risk Stratification to be main the theme of the SRS Worldwide Course there in January 2017. This was an extremely well attended meeting with 300 surgeons. The meeting agenda was arrived upon after performing a needs assessment of local needs and the meeting was tailored to the local surgeons. 

Finally, several members of this committee are involved with efforts to work with other societies including AAOS, POSNA and AANS and prepare educational publications that enhance safety and performance improvement. 

Chair: Rajiv Sethi, MD Committee:  Suken A. Shah, MD; John R. Dimar, II, MD; Mark A. Erickson, MD; Terry D. Amaral, MD; Nicholas D. Fletcher, MD; G. Ying Li, MD; Kris Radcliff, MD; Khoi D. Than, MD; Michael G. Vitale, MD, MPH; David S. Marks, FRCS; Matthew F. Halsey, MD; XueSong Zhang, MD