Search

BACKGROUND CONTEXT An important step in improving spinal care is understanding how current health-care resources and associated cost are being utilized and distributed across a health-care system. PURPOSE Our objective was to examine the magnitude and distribution of direct health care costs for spinal conditions across physician type and hospital setting. DESIGN/SETTING Cross-sectional analysis of administrative health data for the fiscal year 2013–2014 from the province of Ontario, Canada. PATIENT SAMPLE Adult population aged 18+ years (N=10,841,302). OUTCOME MEASURES Person visit rates and total number of people and visits by specific care settings were calculated for all spinal conditions as well as stratified by nontrauma and trauma-related conditions. Variation in rates by age and sex was examined. The proportion of patients seeing physicians of different specialties was calculated for each condition grouping. Direct medical costs were estimated and their percentage distribution by care setting calculated for nontrauma and trauma-related conditions. Additionally, costs for spinal imaging overall and stratified by type of scan were determined. METHODS Administrative health databases were analyzed, including data on physician services, emergency department visits, and hospitalizations. ICD-9 and -10 diagnostic codes were used to identify nontraumatic (degenerative or inflammatory) and traumatic spinal disorders. A validated algorithm was used to estimate direct medical costs. RESULTS Overall, 822,000 adult Ontarians (7.6%) made 1.6 million outpatient physician visits for spinal conditions; the majority (1.1 million) of these visits were for nontrauma conditions. Approximately, 86% of outpatient visits were in primary care. Emergency Department (ED) visits for nontrauma spinal conditions (130,000 out of 156,000 ED visits) accounted for 2.8% of all ED visits in the province. Total costs for spine-related care were $264 million (CDN) with 64% of costs due to nontrauma conditions. For these nontrauma conditions, ED visits cost $28 million for 130,000 visits ($215 per visit). For $32 million spent in primary care, 890,000 visits were made ($36 per visit). Spine imaging costs were $66.5 million, yielding a combined total of $330 million in health care spending for spinal conditions. CONCLUSIONS Spinal conditions place a large and costly burden on the health-care system. The disproportionate annual cost associated with ED visits represents a potential opportunity to redirect costs to fund more clinically and cost-effective models of care for nontraumatic spinal conditions.

Background contextIt is well accepted that total hip and knee arthroplasty (THA/TKA) for osteoarthritis (OA) is associated with reliable and sustained improvements in postoperative health-related quality of life (HRQoL). Although several studies have demonstrated comparable outcomes with THA/TKA after surgical intervention for lumbar spinal stenosis (LSS), the sustainability of the outcome after LSS surgery compared with THA/TKA remains uncertain.PurposeThe primary purpose of this study is to assess whether improvements in HRQoL after surgical management of focal lumbar spinal stenosis (FLSS) with or without spondylolisthesis are sustainable over the long term compared with that of THA/TKA for OA.Study designSingle-center, retrospective, longitudinal matched cohort study of prospectively collected outcomes, with a minimum of 5-year follow-up (FU).Patient samplePatients who had primary one- to two-level spinal decompression with or without instrumented fusion for FLSS and THA/TKA for primary OA.Outcome measuresPostoperative change from baseline to last FU in Short-Form 36 physical component summary (PCS) and mental component summary (MCS) scores among groups was used as the primary outcome measure.MethodsAn age, sex-matched inception cohort of primary one- to two-level spinal decompression with or without instrumented fusion for FLSS (n=99) was compared with a cohort of primary THA (n=99) and TKA (n=99) for OA and followed for a minimum of 5 years. Linear regression was used for the primary analysis.ResultsMean (percent) FUs in months were 80.5+16.04 (79%), 94.6+16.62 (92%), and 80.6+16.84 (85%) for the FLSS, THA, and TKA cohorts, respectively, with a range of 5 to 10 years for all three cohorts. The number of patients who have undergone revision including those lost to FU for the FLSS, THA, and TKA cohorts were n=20 (20.2%, same site [n=7] and adjacent segment [n=13]) requiring 27 operations, n=3 (3%, same site) requiring 5 operations, and n=8 (8.1%, same site) requiring 12 operations, respectively (p.1).ConclusionsSignificant improvements in HRQoL after surgical treatment of FLSS with or without spondylolisthesis and hip and knee OA are sustained for a mean of 7 to 8 years, with a minimum of 5-year FU. Despite a higher revision rate, patients undergoing surgery for FLSS can expect a comparable long-term average improvement in HRQoL from baseline compared with their peers undergoing TKA and to a lesser extent THA.