Any time an orthopedic surgeon goes into an operating room, there may be tens of thousands of dollars of devices under consideration for his/her use.
Wouldn’t it be nice if that surgeon knew how much the stuff cost?
A paper in Health Affairs, written by orthopedic surgeons, reports on a survey of 503 orthopedic attending physicians and residents at seven academic medical centers. They were asked to estimate the costs of thirteen commonly used orthopedic devices. Excerpt:
“…Most respondents indicated that cost should play an important role in the selection of devices. However, actual knowledge of device costs was low among attending physicians and residents alike. This was true even though our survey asked about common orthopedic devices, used institution-specific vendors and pricing, and excluded disposable components and other nonimplanted items. … The actual cost of each device was determined at each institution; estimates within 20 percent of the actual cost were considered correct. …Attending physicians correctly estimated the cost of the device 21 percent of the time, and residents did so 17 percent of the time. Thirty-six percent of physicians and 75 percent of residents rated their knowledge of device costs “below average” or “poor.” However, more than 80 percent of all respondents indicated that cost should be “moderately,” “very,” or “extremely” important in the device selection process.”
Addendum: Here’s the Kaiser Health News story on the survey paper.
————————
Tweet
Follow us on Twitter:
https://twitter.com/garyschwitzer
https://twitter.com/healthnewsrevu
Comments
Please note, comments are no longer published through this website. All previously made comments are still archived and available for viewing through select posts.
Comments are closed.
Our Comments Policy
But before leaving a comment, please review these notes about our policy.
You are responsible for any comments you leave on this site.
This site is primarily a forum for discussion about the quality (or lack thereof) in journalism or other media messages (advertising, marketing, public relations, medical journals, etc.) It is not intended to be a forum for definitive discussions about medicine or science.
We will delete comments that include personal attacks, unfounded allegations, unverified claims, product pitches, profanity or any from anyone who does not list a full name and a functioning email address. We will also end any thread of repetitive comments. We don”t give medical advice so we won”t respond to questions asking for it.
We don”t have sufficient staffing to contact each commenter who left such a message. If you have a question about why your comment was edited or removed, you can email us at feedback@healthnewsreview.org.
There has been a recent burst of attention to troubles with many comments left on science and science news/communication websites. Read “Online science comments: trolls, trash and treasure.”
The authors of the Retraction Watch comments policy urge commenters:
We”re also concerned about anonymous comments. We ask that all commenters leave their full name and provide an actual email address in case we feel we need to contact them. We may delete any comment left by someone who does not leave their name and a legitimate email address.
And, as noted, product pitches of any sort – pushing treatments, tests, products, procedures, physicians, medical centers, books, websites – are likely to be deleted. We don”t accept advertising on this site and are not going to give it away free.
The ability to leave comments expires after a certain period of time. So you may find that you’re unable to leave a comment on an article that is more than a few months old.
You might also like