I am a proud millennial. I panic when I don’t have wifi. I place my order from Amazon until my phone tells me it arrived. And I earn a smart participation trophy just for appearing in the Peloton. A shout out to Jess Sims and Emma Lovewell for never leaving me down.
But millennials are also in their thirties, and we’re just beginning to feel monetary duty and prudent investment strategies. It’s no secret that we prefer to paint smarter than harder, and we value the balance between life and painting. To enjoy life, we want to plan long-term and invest in ourselves, and that includes our bodies and joints.
There are few returns on investment greater than a total arthroplasty. While those operations don’t necessarily save lives, they keep my generation’s quality of life above all else.
The operation is statistically inevitable for many of us, as approximately 2 million patients a year are expected to get a synthetic joint by 2030. While joint replacement surgeons will be the first to tell you that we haven’t performed the more productive task of quantifying the social impact on the price we provide, it’s intuitive that restoring mobility has immeasurable economic and public health benefits. We have extended lifespan, facilitated independent living, shortened the list of other people with disabilities, long-term assisted living facilities, rejuvenated the workforce, and subsequently revived the global economy with men and women without disabilities. Of course, we take patients to their hobbies, from skiing to spending quality time with their loved ones. Joint replacement surgery is rightly the operation of the century, but it is already on its way to being the operation of the millennium.
It is written on the wall that hip and knee replacement is directly threatened through the forces that govern our healthcare system. The more surgeons push to solve this problem, the more helpless we find ourselves. Total arthroplasty represents the highest load medium for the Centers. for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) and remains a devaluation target. Without strategic planning, the next generation of patients may suffer.
Despite more productive lobbying efforts through the American Hip and Knee Surgeons Association to raise awareness of the unfairness of federal fitness policy, additional Medicare cuts are looming in the form of kidnapping and Pay-As-You-Go (PAYGO) prestige that can only disproportionately extra minimize reimbursement through a significant percentage in 2023. The purpose has shifted from resolving the devaluation to simply stopping the bleeding. The theory of self-determination emphasizes the desire for autonomy, kinship, and competence to satisfy and motivate. Financial Regulations have stripped surgeons, who devote more than a decade of their early life to education, of their autonomy and their connection to the trivialization of their life’s work. Surgeons’ fees represent only 6% of the total cost of care. for the replacement of a joint, regulators continue to target this percentage rather than ever-increasing hospital and administrative charges. Is this the message we wish to send to those to whom we entrust our lives and our members?
Therefore, it is expected that more and more surgeons will opt out of federal and personal insurers in favor of pay-cash-only models to stay afloat. At current rates, it’s easy to believe in a flexible market where young patients are starting to save up for their eventual joint replacement as more and more surgeons withdraw from fee-driven medicine. Alternatively, turning the episode of hip and knee replacement care into a monetary derivative such as a long-term contract that allows the procedure to be purchased at a long-term predetermined value, with the ability to trade in an exchange formula if the surgery is not required – possibly it would not be outside the realm of possibility. The current approval rate for a 90-day joint replacement episode for singles ranges from $18,000 to $40,000 depending on staffing costs, implant costs, overhead and other factors. There is already an open market to some extent with patients looking for express surgeons and technologies. Placement in the direct-to-consumer market shows no signs of hesitation. It is not unlikely that all elective hip and knee replacements can go through paid cosmetic and plastic surgery procedures. While the loss of service is far from cosmetic and aesthetic, the economic climate says otherwise. Fiscally, insurers are motivated to avoid footing the bill for their most expensive and most expensive item.
There are all the symptoms that the regulatory and economic climate is forcing doctors to adopt overpayment models. The withdrawal of abusive physical care plans threatens to exacerbate disparities in patient access, but doctors can no longer function with wonderful professional, emotional, and monetary losses for most patients. Even though our fitness insurance plans will cover all joint operations for millennials in 30 years, at a price lower than an in-office steroid injection, would we have to go through the surgeon’s scalpel?Are you willing to settle for a negligible sum for reimbursement?Would we get the same surgeon skills if this downward spiral continued?Or would we have what we paid for?
Access to high-quality care is the most serious short-term side effect of bureaucratic attempts to reduce prices and benefit margins. In an effort to repair the doctor-patient relationship without suffocating third parties, some have devised cutting-edge tactics to fix this problem. problem of approach. A duo of orthopedic surgeons came together to create Best In Class Medical Doctors (BICMD) to mitigate the gap in access to the highest quality physicians. By learning from the pandemic to leverage telemedicine and its network of leading orthopedic professionals, BICMD once again demonstrates that medicine is more productive when doctors are in charge. While this style is not the permanent solution to administrative bureaucracy, it counteracts the devaluation of the doctor and empowers the maximum: the patient.
Knowing what we know about failed policies focused on payer and payment styles of choice where one length doesn’t suit, and the priorities of a generation that values quality of life as a premium, why wouldn’t we reconsider how we invest in our bionic bodies of tomorrow?? Whether it’s saving more today or building long-term contracts around joint replacement, the existing business style of hip and knee replacement surgery wants to reinvent itself.