Posted by Bill Sandweg on 28 October 2013.
It seems like every day I read about a doctor or a medical group blaming the high cost of medical care or the high cost of health insurance on greedy malpractice lawyers. To hear them tell it, there is no such thing as medical negligence and no one ever gets hurt because a doctor was looking to make a few bucks off an unsuspecting patient. In fact, many expensive surgeries are unnecessary and are performed because that is the way the surgeon and the hospital get paid.
Back in July I wrote about spine surgeons who created distributorships to sell their hospitals the medical hardware they were going to implant in the spines of their patients. The more they implanted, the more money they made and they made a lot of it. Here is a link to that post. Today the Washington Post published a story about the explosion of spine surgery in the United States and examined the conduct of a Florida surgeon, who annually received hundreds of thousands of dollars from his hospital as a reward for performing so many surgeries in the hospital. The hospital made a lot of money from the surgeries done in its operating rooms and from the charges for taking care of the patients afterward.
Spinal surgery has indeed exploded in the United States. Even though nothing is changing about the human spine, surgeons are performing six times as many spinal fusion surgeries as they did only 20 years ago. Medicare itself estimates that it paid over $200 million in 2011 for unnecessary spinal fusion surgery. It believes it may be spending billions annually for unnecessary medical treatment when all forms of unnecessary treatment are considered. And you know who is the final source for all that money Medicare is spending on unnecessary medical treatment: it is you and I, the American taxpayer.
The Florida hospital that employs the spinal surgeon and pays him extra money when the number of his surgeries exceeds a certain threshold got nervous in 2010 and hired an independent medical audit firm to look at the surgeon’s records and determine if his surgeries were really necessary. The audit firm looked at ten patient files and concluded that nine of the surgeries were unnecessary. Alarmed, the hospital conducted its own examination and now asserts that all of the surgeries were needed. Of course, had it concluded otherwise, it would be admitting legal liability for participating with the surgeon in performing and billing for unnecessary surgeries.
You can read all about it and make up your own mind about whether this particular surgeon performs unnecessary operations but, regardless of whether this doctor is guilty or not, the community of spinal surgeons as a whole is taking us to the cleaners as well as to the operating room. Remember, doctors don’t get paid much for telling you that you are healthy. Certainly, spinal surgeons don’t get paid for telling you that you don’t need spinal surgery. Be as cautious when someone tries to sell you a spinal surgery as you are when someone tries to sell you a new vacuum cleaner. Also remember that an unneeded vacuum is lots cheaper than spinal surgery and you will likely still be able to walk around after buying it. The same cannot always be said following unneeded spinal surgery.