FACS, a spine surgeon and president of the Virginia Spine Institute in
Reston, Va.
It can also benefit your facility. Innovations in spine surgery and
emerging technologies are giving surgeons the tools and confidence
they need to perform a host of procedures in outpatient ORs, from
posterior cervical foraminotomy (for relief of pinched nerves) and
anterior cervical discectomy and fusion (ACDF) to minimally invasive
lumbar laminectomy and discectomy. Medicare is also reimbursing for
select spine procedures performed in surgery centers, including neck
and lumbar fusions and cervical discectomy. Dr. Good believes the
number of procedures Medicare will pay for in the outpatient setting
— and the number of cases you can host — will only increase as tech-
nology continues to advance.
James Petros, MD, MBA, founder and medical director for Allied
Pain & Spine Institute, saw spine as a growing specialty and helped
design and open the Trinity Surgery Center in San Jose, Calif. The
3,000-square-foot center has hosted about 1,400 spine and pain-man-
agement procedures annually since opening its doors in December
2016.
Equipment costs accounted for 35% to 40% of the facility's 7-figure
start-up budget, according to Dr. Petros, the facility's managing part-
ner. On the purchase list: Jackson and Wilson table frames, (because
surgeons have different positioning preferences), a C-arm (costing
about $85,000), a surgical microscope (which can range in cost from
$100,000 for a basic model to $500,000 for a high-powered, high-optic
model). Dr. Petros and his colleagues also purchased pneumatic drills
and spine instrumentation sets, including lumbar and cervical trays,
retractors and implants.
Is investing in robotic technology worth it? Dr. Good thinks so. He
says the price of a robotic platform ranges from a couple hundred
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