Episode
Outpatient Brain Surgery: How Buffalo Built America's Only Neurosurgical ASC
- Podcast
- The Doctor's Lounge
- Published
- Apr 26, 2026
- Duration seconds
- 3057
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Summary
Episode Summary Anish and Anthony are joined by Dr. Elad Levy — Professor and Chair of Neurosurgery at the University at Buffalo, holder of the L. Nelson Hopkins Endowed Chair, and one of the country's most prolific physician innovators — for a wide-ranging conversation on how he and his partners built Atlas Surgery Center, the only physician-owned outpatient neurosurgery center in the United States, now performing roughly 3,000 cases a year including outpatient angiograms, carotid stenting, brain aneurysm treatment, gamma knife radiosurgery, and complex spine work. Dr. Levy walks through the operational efficiencies that let four staff do the work of fifteen to twenty in a hospital, the negotiated device pricing, the inclusion/exclusion criteria for outpatient cases, the constraints of Medicare's inpatient-only list, and why payers have embraced the model at 90% of hospital rates. The conversation also traces his personal arc — from rowing at Choate and Dartmouth, to neurosurgery training at Pitt, to fellowship under Nick Hopkins in Buffalo — and the field-defining work he and colleagues did to establish mechanical thrombectomy as standard of care in the 2015 New England Journal papers, plus his current work on endovascular brain-computer interfaces with Synchron and ongoing conversations with Neuralink. The episode closes on neurosurgery workforce challenges, the alternative pathway to board certification for foreign-trained surgeons, and why physician ownership may be one of the most underrated levers for rural access to specialty care. Chapters 00:00 Welcome and introducing Dr. Elad Levy 01:05 The origin of Atlas Surgery Center: outgrowing the hospital 03:14 Relationship with the hospital system and how the partnership works 04:36 SUNY Buffalo, Kaleida Health, and…