Becker’s Spine Review

A federal judicial panel centralized 49 lawsuits into two manufacturer-specific proceedings, again declining to put all spinal cord stimulator litigation before one judge. The U.S. Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation issued transfer orders Oct. 2 sending the Abbott cases to…

CMS has proposed ending the traditional merit-based Incentive payment system reporting and requiring spine surgeons and other clinicians to report through MIPS Value Pathways starting in 2029. The change would reshape how spine surgeons are measured, even though none of…

Michael Knudsen, MD, spent years learning how to make the right diagnosis, choose the right operation and perform it well. Then, he became an attending and discovered how much of being a surgeon happens outside the operating room. “You suddenly…

Some of spine surgery’s most familiar assumptions are becoming less certain. As motion preservation expands, technology accelerates and the economics of practice shift, surgeons are reconsidering ideas that once seemed relatively settled, from whether fusion should always be avoided to…

John Reynolds, CEO of the Franklin-based Bone & Joint Institute of Tennessee, told Becker’s that one of his earliest lessons in how to roll out AI platforms came at a quarterly all-staff meeting with the practice’s roughly 400 employees, where…

A spine operation can go exactly as planned. The patient leaves the hospital, avoids a readmission and looks good at six weeks. Aqib Zehri, MD, does not think this fact tells him whether the surgery was successful. Dr. Zehri, a…

When CMS finalized the Ambulatory Specialty Model in its 2026 physician fee schedule, it created a mandatory program that will tie Medicare Part B payments for certain specialists to how they manage heart failure and low back pain. Now that…

Bradenton, Fla.-based Coastal Orthopedics added Vincent Federico, MD, as a spine specialist. Dr. Federico specializes in ultra-minimally invasive, motion-preserving and same-day spine surgery, according to a news release shared with Becker’s. He treats cervical, thoracic and lumbar spine conditions. He…