Surgonomics. Money down the drains
E. Munoz, I. Margolis and L. Wise
The importance of delivering cost-effective quality surgical care has
increased with the introduction of new payment mechanisms designed to slow
the rise in health care costs. We examined the reasons for the use of a
commonly used surgical input--a drain--to determine surgeons' feelings
about the importance of costs. Both resident and attending general surgeons
felt that the cost of the input was not an important consideration in the
decision-making process of choosing the input. We believe that these
findings are applicable across the range of inputs (hospital days,
laboratory tests, ancillary procedures) used by surgeons in their
practices. Unless this changes in the future, surgeons will not be able to
provide quality surgical care within economic constraints.