Factors associated with lumbar fusion surgery: a case-control study.

PURPOSE: The objective of this study is to identify the demographic and payer factors that are associated with lumbar fusion surgery. METHODS: A case-control study was conducted utilizing a population of 38,092 patients from the 2010 Florida Agency for Health Care Administration (AHCA), USA hospital discharge data. The case population included 16,236 records with any of five ICD-9-CM principal procedure codes for initial lumbar fusion. The control group was comprised of 21,856 patients who were admitted for the same principal diagnoses as the cases, but who did not have initial fusion surgery. Logistic regression was used to analyze the association of age, gender, race and principal payer type with initial lumbar fusions. The interaction between age and payer was also examined, as payer type may moderate the association between age and lumbar fusion surgery. RESULTS: Gender, race, principal payer and age were all found to be significantly associated with lumbar fusion surgery. The interaction of payer and age was also found to be significant. Being female was significantly associated with having a fusion (OR = 1.11, 95 % CI 1.07-1.16). The association between age and receiving surgery was greatest for the less than 20 age group (OR = 10.43, 95 % CI 8.74-12.45). Employees and dependents of Federal government agencies (Tricare, etc.) and patients with commercial insurance were significantly associated with surgery (OR = 1.48, 95 % CI 1.29-1.70 and OR = 1.12, 95 % CI 1.04-1.20, respectively). Patients insured through Medicaid (a social health care program for those with low incomes and limited resources), and the uninsured were negatively associated with surgery (OR = 0.53, 95 % CI 0.47-0.60 and OR = 0.52, 95 % CI 0.46-0.58, respectively). CONCLUSIONS: Lumbar fusion surgery is not recommended in clinical practice guidelines for the top four principal diagnoses in this study. Yet, patients covered by certain types of insurance were found to be significantly associated with fusion surgery.

Operating Profitability of For-Profit and Not-for-Profit Florida Community Hospitals During Medicare Policy Changes, 2000 to 2010.

Medicare Advantage was implemented in 2004 and the Recovery Audit Contractor (RAC) program was implemented in Florida during 2005. Both increase surveillance of medical necessity and deny payments for improper admissions. The purpose of the present study was to determine their potential impact on for-profit (FP) and not-for-profit (NFP) hospital operating margins in Florida. FP hospitals were expected to be more adversely affected as admissions growth has been one strategy to improve stock performance, which is not a consideration at NFPs. This study analyzed Florida community hospitals from 2000 through 2010, assessing changes in pre-tax operating margin (PTOM). Florida Agency for Health Care Administration data were analyzed for 104 community hospitals (62 FPs and 42 NFPs). Academic, public, and small hospitals were excluded. A mixed-effects model was used to assess the association of RAC implementation, organizational and payer type variables, and ownership interaction effects on PTOM. FP hospitals began the period with a higher average PTOM, but converged with NFPs during the study period. The average Medicare Advantage effect was not significant for either ownership type. The magnitude of the RAC variable was significantly negative for average PTOM at FPs (-4.68) and positive at NFPs (0.08), meaning RAC was associated with decreasing PTOM at FP hospitals only. RAC complements other Medicare surveillance systems that detect medically unnecessary admissions, coding errors, fraud, and abuse. Since its implementation in Florida, average FP and NFP operating margins have been similar, such that the higher margins reported for FP hospitals in the 1990s are no longer evident.

Predictors of the charges for lumbar fusion surgery in Florida hospitals.

STUDY DESIGN: A mixed-effects model was used to evaluate the effects specific surgical procedure by International Classification of Diseases, Ninth Revision, Clinical Modification, procedure code, patient age, sex, ethnic group, payers for the inpatient hospital stay, and number of additional diagnoses beyond the principal diagnosis that led to the procedure (as a proxy for severity of illness) on the charges for lumbar fusion surgery. OBJECTIVE: The present research examined the charges and the predictors of the charges for lumbar fusion surgery in Florida hospitals in 2010. SUMMARY OF BACKGROUND DATA: The number of spinal fusion surgical procedures in the United States has grown exponentially in recent years despite the procedure's high costs and questionable efficacy for many of the principal diagnoses associated with it. METHODS: All records with any of the 5 International Classification of Diseases, Ninth Revision, Clinical Modification, principal procedure codes for lumbar fusion were extracted (cases) from the Florida Agency for Health Care Administration (AHCA) hospital discharge data for the year 2010. A control group was obtained by taking all patients who had the same principal diagnoses as the cases, but who did not have fusion surgery. This produced 16,236 cases and 21,856 controls. RESULTS: The total hospital charges for lumbar fusion surgery in Florida in 2010 were $2,095,413,584. Despite having the same principal diagnoses and a similar number of additional diagnoses, patients who underwent a fusion surgery had 3 times the charges as those incurred by the controls. The number of additional diagnoses, sex, age, payer, and principal procedure, were all found to be statistically significant predictors of charges. Ethnicity was not significant. Of all the predictors, the number of additional diagnoses was the most significant in the model (F=2577, P<0.0001). CONCLUSION: The high incidence and charges for fusion surgical procedures shown in this study emphasize the need for a better understanding of when these surgical procedures are justified and for which patients. LEVEL OF EVIDENCE: N/A.

The effects of Medicare Health Management Organizations on hospital operating profit in Florida.

Between 1992 and 1997, the number of members enrolled in Medicare Health Management Organizations (HMOs) nationwide in the USA more than doubled. During this period, managed care organizations wielded considerable influence over the health care of a large segment of the Medicare population in Florida. This study examined the impact on operational profit of 148 short-term, acute-care Florida hospitals in this period from Medicare HMO patients, as part of a hospital's payer mix. Three measures of hospital profitability were used: operating profit per actual bed, total operating profit with no adjustment for bed size, and operating margins. The multivariate statistical model employed in this study was a linear mixed model with an autoregressive order one (AR[1]) parametric structure on the covariance matrix. The results of the study indicate that Florida hospitals experienced greater profit pressures from Medicare HMO inpatients than from traditional Medicare inpatients. Further, these hospitals could have experienced positive profit effects with greater traditional Medicare participation and negative financial effects with greater Medicare HMO participation. Additionally, Medicare HMO patients appear to have been admitted to hospitals in worse health condition than those in traditional Medicare. Medicare HMO patients were more likely to have used emergency rooms as the source of admission than traditional Medicare patients. Also, Medicare HMO patients were more likely to have been admitted as emergent cases than traditional Medicare patients. Other research has shown that Medicare HMO patients, at the time of enrolment, are probably healthier than traditional Medicare enrollees, but here they appear to have been admitted to hospitals with higher levels of severity of illness. Explanations are offered for these findings.

Effects of Medicare BBA spending reductions on the profitability of general acute care hospitals.

The Balanced Budget Act of 1997 was intended to reduce spending by about $115 billion from the Medicare Hospital Insurance trust fund over a five-year period. Several studies were funded by the hospital industry that indicated that the actual reductions would be far greater than $115 billion and that these reductions would have a devastating effect on U.S. hospital finances. In 1999, Congress passed the Balanced Budget Refinement Act, which added back about $11 billion in spending for fiscal years 2000 through 2002. In 2000, Congress passed the Benefits Improvement and Protection Act, which restored another $37 billion in spending over a five-year period. These cutbacks were going into effect at the same time as a cyclical decline in hospital operating margins occurred. This study was designed to determine if any separate effect of the Balanced Budget Act could be detected in the operating margins of general acute care hospitals in Tampa Bay, Florida. Operating margins were analyzed for 25 hospitals for a 12-year period (1990 through 2001), and a regression model was tested in which the dependent variable was the difference in mean operating margins for each hospital between the 1990 through 1997 period and the 1998 through 2001 period. The mean percentage of hospital revenue derived from Medicare, five other revenue source variables, and three hospital structural variables were used as the predictor variables. A statistically significant decline in operating margins was seen between these two periods, but Medicare revenue did not account for a significant amount of the variance. Thus, it was concluded that the Balanced Budget Act of 1997 did not significantly affect the operating margins of the study hospitals. Implications for Medicare policy are addressed.