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Replacing open surgery with laparoscopic procedures could save hospitals nationwide more than $340 million according to a new study published in JAMA Surgery by researchers at Johns Hopkins University. The shift to minimally invasive procedures could also reduce the rate of complications after surgery and shorten the recovery time for patients.
The findings are based on an analysis of 80,000 open appendectomies, partial colectomies and lung lobectomies. Researchers compared the outcomes and billings for these surgeries against the estimated costs and results of accomplishing the same results using minimally invasive surgery. The analysis showed that if all hospitals across the country had increased their use of laparoscopic surgery by just 50 percent, total hospital stays would have dropped by 145,000 days resulting in an annual cost savings of $288 million. They also found that hospitals could have avoided 3,500 post-op complications.
Even more impressive results could have been achieved if hospitals with the lowest utilization of laparoscopic procedures matched the utilization of the top one-third of hospitals who effectively incorporated minimally invasive surgeries when it made sense to do so for their patients. In that scenario, hospitals stays would have decreased by almost 170,000 days with an annual cost savings of $337 million and more than 4,000 post-op complications could have been avoided.
According to Marty Makary, MD, MPH, a professor of surgery at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and the study’s lead author, “Minimally invasive surgery, done on the right patients, represents an under-recognized opportunity not only for cost savings, but also for improving quality in health care and reducing the very real pain and suffering associated with surgical complications.”
As medical care costs continue to skyrocket nationwide, the study’s authors hope their findings will help lead to a shift in doing more minimally invasive procedures that make good sense and even better cents for hospitals and patients.
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