Sanford Health in Bemidji Accredited as Comprehensive Bariatric Surgery Center

Sanford Health in Bemidji has been accredited as a Comprehensive Center under the Metabolic and Bariatric Surgery Accreditation and Quality Improvement Program (MBSAQIP).

In 2022, Sanford Bemidji was accredited as a low-acuity bariatric center, only allowing the hospital to do the initial weight-loss surgery for their patients. This would force the hospital to turn away a good number of patients.

“We actually were transferring about 10 people a month to either Fargo, the Twin Cities, or the Mayo Clinic because we had not reached this accreditation,” explained Mike Joannides, Director of Bariatric Surgery at Sanford Bemidji Medical Center.

Being designated as a Comprehensive Center allows the hospital to do revision bariatrics, which Sanford Bemidji believes will bring many benefits to the program.

“The big thing towards that is, if somebody who had weight-loss surgery in the past, now they’re looking to do something more to lose more weight,” said Joannides. “So either conversion of a sleeve gastrectomy to a Roux-en-Y gastric bypass, or they previously had a band, an adjustable gastric band placed, we can take the band out now and convert them to another weight-loss surgery that is more successful.”

This will also allow Sanford Bemidji to work with more high-risk patients.

“If your body mass index was above 60, we normally couldn’t do that operation before, and now that we’ve reached this accreditation for Comprehensive, we can now do patients with a BMI over 60,” Joannides added “We can also do people that have any heart failure issues or kidney failure issues, whereas before we couldn’t do that.”

Sanford Bemidji believes the biggest benefit accreditation will bring is the ability to closely follow their patients along their weight loss journey after the initial surgery and help with any extra assistance needed.

“I’ll know what I’ve done, so if somebody traveled somewhere else to get a revision done, they’re usually back in our community then, and then I’m trying to piece together what they did, and I don’t necessarily know what the other surgeons did,” said Joannides. “Now we can keep that all within the community, and I know what’s done.”

The bariatric program at Sanford Bemidji is a self-referral program, meaning you don’t need a primary doctor’s referral.