How Bundled Payments Could Change Spine Surgery for Medicare Patients

Medicare has been experimenting with new ways to pay for medical services. One of these experiments is called Bundled Payments for Care Improvement Advanced, or BPCI Advanced for short. This program started in 2018 and includes spine surgery done outside of the hospital. The idea is to pay a set amount for the entire procedure, rather than paying for each part separately. This is supposed to save money and improve care. But does it really work? That's the big question. Outpatient surgeries, like spine surgeries, make up most of the surgeries done in hospitals. But few value-based payment programs have focused on these types of procedures. The BPCI Advanced program is one of the first to try. It's still not clear if bundled payments actually reduce spending or improve quality for outpatient surgery. However, there are plans to expand this model in the future. Let's think about this for a moment. If bundled payments work, they could be a game-changer. They could make healthcare more affordable and improve the quality of care. But if they don't work, it's a step backward. It's important to keep an eye on this and see how it plays out. After all, it's our healthcare system we're talking about.