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No volume increase after surgeon investment in specialty hospital

Ambulatory Surgery Reimbursement Update, June 7, 2005

The results of recently released study indicate that orthopaedic surgeons did not increase their surgical volume or surgical rate after investing in a specialty hospital.

The study, performed at the Fondren Orthopedic Group and the Joe W. King Orthopedic Institute in Houston, Texas, studied ten surgeons during an internal spanning seven years before and eight years after the opening of an orthopaedic surgery specialty hospital in which they held a financial interest, according to The Journal of Bone and Joint Surgery.

The number of specialty hospitals with physician investors in the U.S. has been on the rise, and opponents to the hospitals have said surgeon investors will perform more surgery to maintain the hospital's profitability.

"The ten surgeons performed an average of 4,399 surgical procedures per year before the hospital opened and 4,542 surgical procedures per year after the hospital opened. The rate of change in the number of surgical procedures per year (19.1 compared with 8.9 procedures per year) did not increase after the specialty hospital opened.

"The annual patient volume (16,019 compared with 15,982 patients) and the percentage of patients who underwent surgery (27.5% compared with 28.4%) did not significantly change after the specialty hospital opened," according to The Journal of Bone and Joint Surgery.

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