Everyone has had the miserable experience of waiting in a doctor's office for hours, to the point we have all come to expect it. You know the drill, sit in an ugly, sterile waiting room for an hour before you wait in an exam room for another hour where you shuffle through a stack of five year old magazines.  God forbid you ask the unfriendly staff member why it is taking so long, for fear they may make you wait longer, or, more than likely you will get that blank stare, which is to say, "So what's the problem, everyone has to wait a couple hours to see a doctor?" Probably like me, you have thought or even said out loud, "If I ever get in the medical business I am going to change this."

That uncomfortable scenario is exactly what we are trying to avoid at LSI. Here, we talk about ways to improve service at LSI every day. My passion for helping everyone who walks through the doors of LSI was magnified with my wife's breast cancer diagnosis. The news of her cancer devastated our family. She was our rock and the model of health and consistency. No one deserves cancer, but she deserves it less than anyone I know. She is a beautiful, caring human being, but, thanks to Dr. John Cox and Dr. Rand Altomes, she is a breast cancer survivor. Though it is a continuous battle, the care, positive attitude, and service from the medical team helps to alleviate both the physical and emotional pain that patients and their families experience during these difficult times.

Through this experience, I have always wanted her to receive the best care and service that could be provided. I did not want her to experience any pain. I wanted maximum display of sympathy, quick responses, very tactful delivery of bad news, uplifting encouragement, and a miracle outcome. I wanted it all!  And, while I was going through this with her, I had an epiphany. While I feel like I have always been committed to good service, I had never been able to clearly articulate my vision for good service. I've always asked our staff to go Above and Beyond the call of duty and to provide an experience that is unique in the medical industry, with amenities like complimentary breakfast, lunch, and shuttle service to airports and pharmacies. But, through this experience with my wife, my vision for good service became clearer, and I am better able to describe it to my staff. The philosophy that I encourage my staff to adopt is simple, but profound- treat everyone who comes through the doors of LSI like they are your family, like your sick mother, or child, or in my case, my wife.

With this in mind, I also realized that the first step to excellent service is the selection of caring employees. After careful selection, we screen, test and train staff to share and achieve our service goals. In addition, we provide them with all the necessary tools to give great service. As part of this incentive, we recently created the CEO Service Awards, which gives recognition and cash bonuses to employees who consistently go above and beyond the call of duty. We have doubled our commitment to provide the best service in the medical industry. It is my passion, my commitment, and LSI's core principle.

In my last post, History of LSI, I briefly mentioned Dr. James St. Louis. His contribution to LSI, as well as to my life has been invaluable, so I would like to tell you a bit more. During October of 2004, I met a genius doctor who gave me my life back. But more importantly, I met a man, a fabulous father,devoted husband, and a friend for life- Dr. James St. Louis, Chief Surgeon at LSI.

We have all heard the horror stories about doctors, especially surgeons with arrogant attitudes and poor bedside manners. You know, the evil geniuses with God complexes; not Jim St. Louis. In fact, it is not unusual to see the 2005 and 2008 Physician of the Year perform six surgeries on one afternoon, jump on a plane to see his daughter perform in a swim meet, fly home the next morning to perform more surgeries and hop another plane to visit his son at camp in North Carolina. He once told me that there were times when he would awake and be confused about what city he was in, especially during his transition from Pensacola to Tampa. As I chuckled and nodded in amazement, Jim casually replied, "Bill, I would do it all over again."  

Those conversations with Jim laid an imprint, not only on my mind, but also on my heart.  To me, that was a clear demonstration of Jim's commitment to his family and to LSI.  Many people would be surprised to know that although Jim is an avid sports man, he would never go to an event unless he is accompanied by at least one of his kids! It is truly fascinating to watch a man, whose world revolves around his family, while he continues to commit to performing miracles every day, giving people their lives back.I must admit that at first, I found it quite amazing that Jim does such a great job of balancing his time between his family and his work. But, as I got to know him, I realized that Jim's work is more than professional; it's also personal.  He has a personal attachment to his work and his patients. That's what makes him such a great doctor and that is why striking that balance seems incredibly simple!

When it came to finding a doctor to perform surgery on my spine, having the Tiger Woods of spine surgery was important. I wanted the best of the best and someone in the prime of his career. I wanted someone with no lawsuits and no malpractice claims. Dr. St. Louis was the only minimally invasive spine surgeon that I could find that had such a clean record. Later, discovering that he was such a great family man revealed more about his character, but also that in a lot of ways, he was just like many of us!

Recently, Governor Charlie Crist appointed Dr. St. Louis to the Florida Board of Medicine. As you can imagine, these appointments are only given to doctors with impeccable records and sterling reputations. We are very proud of Jim and thankful for his contribution to LSI, but more personally, I am grateful that I am one of the many patients who got my life back because of Jim's hard work!

Dr. James St. Louis is one of the founding physicians of Laser Spine Institute. He is a board certified orthopedic surgeon, with over 10 years of experience in minimally invasive spine surgery. Dr. St. Louis is a member of the American Medical Association and the Florida Board of Osteopathic Medicine. He is also a two- time recipient of the American Association of Physician Specialists Physician of the Year Award. For more information on Dr. St. Louis, please visit http://www.laserspineinstitute.com/about/orthopedic_spine_surgeons.

As the Chief Executive Officer of Laser Spine Institute, I have the fortunate opportunity to help people get their lives back every day after experiencing years of chronic neck and back pain. As a former patient of our renowned Chief Surgeon Dr. James St. Louis, I can certainly sympathize with anyone suffering from the excruciating symptoms of conditions like spinal stenosis and pinched nerves. No one can possibly understand the pain and suffering unless they have experienced it.

As an athletic youth, I put a lot of stress on my neck and shoulders through years of high school and college football. For the next twenty years, I went through constant conservative treatments such as massage, injections, physical therapy and chiropractic care just to help me cope. Then, after overexerting myself in physical exercise five years ago, I began experiencing stabbing pains in my neck, with burning spasms in my shoulders and numbness in my hands and fingers, and soon had difficulty sitting at my desk to work and started to take Percocet quite frequently.

With no solution to my worsening condition, I began a nationwide search for the best spinal surgeon around. Every doctor I saw wanted to perform a radical open neck procedure. After exhausting my efforts, I elected to have surgery with a neurosurgeon in Miami, FL, who was planning a 3-level anterior cervical fusion with a six inch incision through the front of my neck and the insertion of a plate and six screws for stability.

Three days before this terrifying appointment, I had the amazing fortune of being introduced to Dr. James St. Louis, a great family man and an incredible surgeon, who was having great success with a new technique called minimally invasive endoscopic spinal surgery. Through an incision of less than a half inch, my neck muscles would only be dilated and not cut, and my bulging disc and pinched nerves could be corrected without any hardware or foreign objects. Through this education, I changed my mind and had surgery with Dr. St. Louis. The surgery lasted one hour with absolutely no pain; I enjoyed a mile walk later that afternoon, went back to work the next day and played a successful round of golf one week later. Dr. St. Louis gave me my life back and I feel I have an obligation to tell everyone about our unbelievable doctors this cutting edge technology with our premier services and hospitality.

Being so overjoyed with the freedom from pain, I was able to partner with Dr. St. Louis, Dr. Michael Perry and Dr. Glenn Hamburg to open LSI in March of 2005. We started LSI in a small 2,500 square ft. office based surgery center with only one operating room and a staff of 12 employees, performing approximately 15 surgeries monthly. By June 2006, LSI became an ambulatory surgical center, in order to facilitate the growing number of patients who were seeking relief from their excruciating back and neck pain. Soon thereafter, we realized that in order to help an increasing number of patients, while continuing to provide the same level of hospitality and service, we needed to open another facility on the west coast.

We plan to open the Scottsdale, Arizona Laser Spine Institute outpatient surgical center in January 2009. This new surgical center will cater to those who prefer to travel to the western U.S. We have had the opportunity to help over 8,000 back and neck pain sufferers from around the world since 2005 and it is our mission to help as many people as possible, who are experiencing pain or discomfort from spinal conditions. We are very excited about this new facility and the opportunities that it presents for our patients. In a later post, I will give you more details about our new facility in Arizona.

It is amazing to see that we have grown by leaps and bounds in the last three and a half years. I feel we have grown successfully over the years because of our dedication to providing the highest quality of service to our patients. I always enjoy hearing stories from others about their lives before and after surgery. Being a former back pain sufferer, I truly understand what they went through and how difficult it was to live life. Because of my experience, I can relate to the frustration of being accustomed to performing daily activities and having to stop because of the severe pain. I feel it is my duty to educate others on their conditions and the healthcare treatments available today, but also to make people aware that they are not alone. From time to time, I will have expert guest bloggers who will discuss some of the latest innovations in endoscopic spine surgery and answer questions that you may have.