Spine surgery patients mostly unaware of costs, compensation

By Ronnie Cohen NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Orthopedic surgery patients go in and out of the operating room "blind" to the cost of their procedures, researchers say, but the patients often assume doctors are making much more than they really do. The misperceptions among spinal surgery patients are emblematic of a major barrier to controlling healthcare costs, according to the authors, which is that nobody knows what the costs are. "You're buying a service, and you don't know what you're getting," the study's lead author, Dr. K. Linnea Welton, told Reuters Health. "I think there's something to be said for a more black-and-white system so patients know what they're buying and they can make more educated decisions." Welton is an orthopedic surgery resident at the University of Michigan.



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