Partnerships between surgeons and hospitals can reduce medical fees

NEW ORLEANS — The best way to reduce medical costs is to cut down on readmission rates and develop partnerships between surgeons and hospitals to identify and reduce modifiable drivers of hospital fees, a speaker said here.

Surgeon fees and health care resource use have a very small effect on overall total medical costs, Scott L. Parker, MD, said at the Congress of Neurological Surgeons Annual Meeting.

“Hospital fees had the largest contribution to overall costs, between 70% and 80%. Surgeon fees and health care resource utilization was much smaller as the second and third contributors. As a potential area of intervention to reduce costs, looking at ways to reduce readmissions within 90 days is a modifiable factor that has the potential to significantly reduce the overall costs of spine care,” Parker said.

The study included 1,694 consecutive patients who underwent elective spine surgery for degenerative cervical and lumbar issues. Parker and colleagues analyzed the overall costs of the procedures up to 90 days after patient discharge.

Parker said the median direct 90-day cost of an anterior cervical discectomy and fusion was $15,837. Lumbar microdiscectomy was $6,075, laminectomy and fusion was $26,408 and just a laminectomy was $8,810. Hospital fees accounted for about 75% of the total costs of these procedures, followed by surgeon fees at 15% and health care resource utilization at 8.5%.

The overall readmission rate was 6.2%, which resulted in 21% of the total direct cost for the 90-day global period, Parker said. – By Robert Linnehan

Reference:

Parker SL, et al. Paper #146. Presented at: Congress of Neurological Surgeons Annual Meeting; Sept. 26-30, 2015; New Orleans.

Disclosure: Parker reports no relevant financial disclosures.