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Through Patients' Eyes, Joint Replacement is a Gold Mine
Study shows patients overestimate what surgeons earn, Medicare pays.
Published:June 11, 2012
Patients wildly overestimate what Medicare reimburses physicians for total hip and knee arthroplasties, say researchers, perhaps because their estimates of what the specialists should earn are so high.
For a study appearing in the May issue of the Journal of Arthroplasty, Jared Foran, MD, and his colleagues at the Panorama Orthopaedics and Spine Center in Golden, Colo., asked 1,120 consecutive patients what they thought surgeons should be paid for hip and knee replacements as well as what they thought Medicare reimbursed them for the procedures.
On average, the patients said they thought surgeons should get $14,358 for the hip cases and $13,332 for the knees. They estimated Medicare's physician reimbursements at $8,212 for hips and $7,196 for knees, and tended to agree that these amounts should be higher.
According to the study, the Medicare's national average for physician reimbursement is $1,375 for hip replacement and $1,450 for knee replacement. The Washington Post notes, "If the average surgeon made what these patients thought he ought to, some rough calculations show his salary would be an impressive $63 million a year."
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