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How problematic is the expense of new technology in this age of cost-conscious health care?
Most practices will prioritize technology purchases
 John B. Pinto |
Great medicine starts with a simple relationship between patient and provider. But strung between these two parties are scores of “transaction intermediaries:” third-party payers, landlords, lay staffers, your cost to attend professional meetings — plus several hundred thousand dollars of capital equipment, including each year’s must-have technology.
Each of these intermediaries has a cost, which, as an owner-surgeon, you must bear. Some are essential to provide standard of care: core staff, office facilities, special testing equipment, etc. Others are optional: plush carpet, new lab jackets, continuing education meetings in Italy and staying on the bleeding edge of the new tech curve.
In a long-ago era of steadily rising fees and technology costing just $5,000 at a whack (remember the diamond vs. sapphire blade controversy for RK?), most surgeons could afford to have the very best and discard it for something new each year. But no longer. We now live in a world where the next advance in cataract treatment technology can cost 100 times this figure to replace a perfectly adequate 61-cent capsulorrhexis needle.
Having seen eye care close up as a consultant in advanced countries where they spend half of what America does per capita on health care, it is clear that the velocity of innovation and tech adoption will taper for all but those advances that are simultaneously vanguard and cost-sparing. We are witnessing the end of an era and the start of a new one, where all feasible transaction intermediaries must be wrung out of the system. A few surgeons will mourn. Some will rejoice at the slower pace (and cost) of keeping current. Most will require many years to adjust to the underlying macroeconomic changes now under way, which will not only slow the output of new technology but revise incomes, tax rates and the purchasing power of retirement savings. The next 20 years will be one wild ride.
John B. Pinto, is the OSN Practice Management Section Editor and president of J. Pinto & Associates Inc., an ophthalmic practice management consulting firm. Disclosure: No products or companies are mentioned that would require financial disclosure.
Outcomes, safety offset cost concerns
 Y. Ralph Chu |
While cost is an important factor to consider in any good business decision, I think in ophthalmology technological advances have really helped move the field forward by improving patient outcomes. Many times, these improvements in safety and patient outcomes sort of offset the initial cost concerns. I do not mean to minimize cost because I think that is an important factor to consider when you are looking at any new technology. But I think, especially in ophthalmology, it is also important to see how these technological advances play out in terms of improving how we do surgery and improving our patient outcomes.
Y. Ralph Chu, MD, is medical director of Chu Vision Institute, Minneapolis. Disclosure: No products or companies are mentioned that would require financial disclosure.