David Hudesman, MD, on How to Build an IBD Center

Dr David Hudesman reviews an inaugural session from the AIBD 2023 meeting that dealt with key points to consider when building an IBD program or working to expand an existing center. 

David Hudesman, MD, is codirector of the Inflammatory Bowel Disease Center and professor of medicine at NYU-Langone Health in New York City.

Hi, I’m Dr. Dave Hudesman, codirector of the IBD Center at NYU Langone Health and Professor of Medicine. I wanted to speak to you about our inaugural preconference workshop at a IBD 2023 on how to build an IBD center or program. It was a really well attended, very successful workshop where the initial part, it was myself and 5 of my colleagues and we gave an overview on sort of our current IBD programs, practices, or centers. We have private practice colleagues as well and sort of what are key tips or key take home points when thinking about building your current program or growing the program you're already in. And then we went into some breakout sessions where we had some nice discussions where it was one faculty with a bunch of attendees to really go into some more details. So at the initial part, at the lecture part or overview part, we talked about a variety of things.

Some of the key points that were brought up were keeping track of your volumes, right? Something very simple that we could all do. It's hard at many institutional practices to get actual revenue numbers, but it's a lot easier for us to just keep track on things like number of IBD patients seen, number of procedures, endoscopies, colonoscopies, number of surgeries, refer infusions, and so forth. So having that number and showing growth over time is extremely important.

Also, some key takeaways we talked about where sort of knowing your institutional structure, knowing your institutional strength. So do you have a great microbiome department, for example, where you could do some translational work? Do you take care of an underserved community, which a lot of clinical trials are looking for, a lot of sponsors are looking to get involved with, knowing collaborations across your institutions to build a program and really have this true multidisciplinary care.

There's a lot of different pieces and FTEs you need. However, you're not going to get all of that upfront. So what is available across the institution? What partnerships can you develop, ensure to share those resources and being very strategic in your hires. So if you're starting out new, I think all of us agree that having a nurse is extremely important, an IBD nurse as your first hire. But whatever that first hire is, you really want to show that return on investment, right? That first hire is going to help you grow volume, which then generates revenue. And then from there, hopefully your institution or practice will be more willing to give you further resources. So that initial part gave these high yield topics. We also talked a little bit about creating a SWOT analysis—strength, weakness, opportunity and threat—as well as how do we create a business plan. And really what's important is putting in that business plan where probably office volume or office visit numbers are much less important. Let's say procedural or infusion volume.

After this initial 20 minutes, we went into our breakout groups and we had different tables where attendees could rotate, where we went into more detail about pitching your vision to leadership. How do you create that vision, what should that vision be? And sort of translating that into a business plan. As I just mentioned, another table was really talking about building an infusion center, an infusion program, as well as working or building a specialty pharmacy. How could you generate revenue and how could you use your pharmacist or pharmacy team if you already have one to maximize could help alleviate your time requirements, improve patient satisfaction and patient time, as well as generate revenue?

Another table we talked about getting involved with research, from registries to clinical trials. So this is taking on some clinical research, especially some registries, is a nice way to generate revenue, to bring in more patients and then can help launch you into clinical trials. And then we had another table talking about a variety of things including intestinal ultrasound. So overall it was very exciting to launch this first pre-con workshop on how to build an IBD program, an IBD center. Again, whether it's private practice, whether it's academic, and since AIBD, we've been able to follow up with the attendees and really help them more in a one-on-one fashion to really get them to where they need to be and help support them as they're trying to build it. Thank you for your time.