What do we mean when we say our price for a rotator cuff repair is $6160? Or the price for an inguinal hernia repair is $2860? That price includes the surgeon’s fee, the anesthesia fee and the fee for the facility. But you say,”what if you get inside of my shoulder and find a whole bunch of other stuff that needs to be fixed?” If we quote a fee and then find that there are other things wrong that require repair we stand by our original quote. Yes, that’s right. Not even an automobile service department will do that. I figure that if we find lots going on that we didn’t anticipate that’s no fault of the patient’s…it’s ours for not picking up on it in the first place. Occasionally a surgeon will call and say, “in order to fix this rotator cuff tear I am going to need special sutures or anchors and I think I’m going to need 3 of them.” These can be expensive…$200-300/each. When this happens I add this anticipated expense to the web price up front. If we don’t use the sutures or anchors then we refund that money. We also provide copies of invoices for the hardware or special implants that are used so that the patient can see that there is no markup whatsoever for these supplies.
What is the average markup for supplies/implants at the big hospitals? I’ll get into that in a future post.
G. Keith Smith, M.D.
