Blue Skies Ahead for Bariatric Surgery
A Message from Dr. John M. Morton
John M. Morton, MD, MPH, FACS, FASMBS, Clinical Editor, Bariatric Times; Chief of the Section of Bariatric and Minimally Invasive Surgery, Stanford University, Stanford, California, and Past President, American Society for Metabolic and Bariatric Surgery.
Dear Friends and Readers,
March comes in like a lion and goes out like a lamb. This old proverb refers to storms that lead to blue skies. Bariatric and metabolic surgery has faced many storms and has prevailed to sunny skies on all occasions. When challenged to improve patient outcomes, the field of bariatric surgery lowered its mortality rate ten-fold in a decade, an experience unique in the annals of surgery. Though bariatric surgery continues to face barriers to coverage and patient access, we all have been meeting and successfully overcoming these challenges through discipline, superb outcomes, and value delivery. By facing these challenges, we have all learned that outcomes, delivery, and teams matter.
Quality improvement and access to care occur when we work together. Quality improvement is a team sport, and employing the entire House of Medicine is the best way to improve access to care.
Bariatric Times wants to recognize the twin pursuits, quality improvement and access to care, by initiating two new features. First, we are introducing a “Quality Corner” section for cases that exemplify quality improvement. Remember that a lesson for one might be a lesson for all; send your cases to [email protected] with a limit of 3,000 words. We are also introducing an “Obesity Partner” column, which will highlight how other fields of medicine have been impacted by obesity and how they are seeking to overcome it. Look for contributors from the fields of orthopedics and oncology in the months to come.
Remember, stormy weather doesn’t last—nothing but blue skies for bariatric and metabolic surgery!
Sincerely,
John M. Morton, MD, MPH, FACS, FASMBS
Category: Editorial Message, Past Articles
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