preserved function and a patient who understands the plan.
Newer models of care make this principle even clearer. In complex small-bowel obstruction and enterocutaneous fistula, teams have combined advanced imaging, percutaneous access, endoscopic techniques and colorectal surgery to create tailored, less invasive options for high-risk patients. One reported multidisciplinary model uses regular joint review of imaging and clinical status, followed when appropriate by co-planned or combined procedures in a hybrid operating environment. Such work remains an evolving field and requires continued study, but its central lesson is already clear: the boundaries between specialties should never become boundaries around the patient’ s possibilities. It requires early communication, mutual respect for expertise, explicit contingency planning and a willingness to choose the least invasive effective option without allowing commitment to one’ s own discipline to become commitment to one’ s own procedure. This is a call to unity.
Each discipline sees something the others may not. The patient benefits when those perspectives meet, and without hierarchy. Patients do not need us to protect our silos. They need us to build bridges together. That is the difference between multidisciplinary care in name and multidisciplinary care in practice. Collaboration requires humility: the recognition that another physician may see a pattern we do not, understand a risk we have underestimated or offer a treatment path unavailable within our own discipline. It also requires a culture in which asking for another perspective is viewed as strength rather than uncertainty.
Whereas an electronic record can connect the data, only clinicians can connect the meaning. An electronic medical record cannot replace direct communication. The gaps become more pronounced when patients move between hospitals. Our aim should not be to return to a less digital era. It should be to use the EMR as the foundation for collaboration rather than as a substitute for it. The most effective teams pair shared documentation with direct physician-to-physician communication, multidisciplinary discussion when complexity warrants it, clear ownership of follow-up tasks and a concise, visible statement of the integrated plan. The EMR should support the conversation, not become the reason the conversation never occurs. The future of coordinated care depends not merely on better interoperability between our systems, but on greater interoperability between the physicians who care for the same patient.
This is the spirit behind“ United We Rise – In Voice and Purpose,” the theme I have carried through my presidency this year. Our strength as a medical society has never come from any one of us. It comes from the willingness of physicians – across specialties, career stages and practice settings – to collaborate, to lead each other forward, and in doing so, to heal.
Dr. Bhatia is a Retired Professor of Cardiac Anesthesia at the University of Louisville and a retired member of the Scientific Committee of the Society of Cardiac Anesthesia.
Stump the Stethoscope
QUIZ 1: Thunderbolt onto my neck, Lightning pain very next sec,
Elbow I can’ t flex, Dunno what’ s next! Prickling tingling down to fingers, Pain gone but numbness lingers!
QUIZ 2: Jagged is my walk, Jumbled is my talk, Double is my vision, Doubts in decision, What I don’ t recall, I invent that and all!
Did you figure it out? Scan the QR code and submit your answers.
The answer will be revealed in the next month ' s issue of Louisville Medicine.
Quizzes provided by Dr. Aneeta Bhatia and Dr. Ankala Subbarao( non-member).
Last Month ' s Answers
SEPTEMBER QUIZ 1 ANSWER: Aberrant right subclavian artery causing dysphagia lusoria
OCTOBER 2026
SEPTEMBER QUIZ 2 ANSWER: Vitamin D
October 2026 5