Several years ago, I served as a panelist at a conference onhealth care ethics at a university-affiliated community hospital.The chief of orthopedic surgery asked my opinion of a proposalmade to him by the hospital's chief executive officer (CEO).The CEO explained that the hospital was losing money on hip-replacementsurgery, because the payment the hospital received from Medicare,which paid for nearly all hip replacements, was less than thehospital's cost. A major component of the cost was the priceof the hip prosthesis. The CEO requested that the orthopedicsurgeons use a much less expensive prosthesis . . . [Full Text of this Article]
Address reprint requests to Dr. Levinsky at Boston University Medical Center, 80 E. Concord St., Boston, MA 02118.
References
Related Letters:
Truth or Consequences
Gurewich V., Johnson J. R., Sobieraj J., McCall T. B., Levinsky N. G.
Extract |
Full Text
N Engl J Med 1998;
339:410-412, Aug 6, 1998.
Correspondence
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