Written by Anuja Vaidya
Becker’s Healthcare hosted a webinar on Dec. 15, featuring Paul Jeffords, MD, a spine surgeon at Atlanta-based Resurgens Spine Center and section chief of orthopedic surgery at Emory Saint Joseph’s Hospital, discussed moving complex spine and orthopedic cases from the hospital to the outpatient setting.
“In the future, healthcare is going to focus on value not on volume, as we have all heard,” said Dr. Jeffords. “We want to improve patient outcomes and improve the overall health of patients and patient experience. For the appropriate patients and procedures, there will be a need to provide quality care at a lower cost and this is possible in an outpatient setting.”
According to Dr. Jeffords, studies show a definite trend of moving more complex spine cases into an outpatient setting, such as minimally invasive TLIFs and MIS posterior lumbar interbody fusions as well as more one-two level spine surgeries rather than just traditional procedures like laminectomies and discectomies.
When moving complex cases into the outpatient setting, there are many factors that providers must consider, including adequate pain management, which can help reduce costs, length-of-stay and readmissions.
Effective pain management can help reduce the cost of performing these more complex spine surgeries. For example, an open single level fusion procedure cost $78,444 with a length of stay of 4.8 days, whereas an MIS single level fusion procedure costs $70,000; and MIS with adequate pain management costs $40,000.
