From Rothman Orthopaedic Institute's Florida expansion to the place of outside forces in healthcare, here are three surgeon quotes that caught the attention of Becker's readers this week:
1. "It would be nice to see CMS give us a little bit of clarity about what criteria these are for inpatient or outpatient procedures." — Joseph Bosco, III, MD, of NYU Langone in New York City on the CMS change he wants to see for orthopedic care.
"Most hospitals and providers are a little bit leery that at some point you can have these RAC audits that they'll come and say, 'Well, how come this patient was done as an inpatient and not outpatient?' So we'd like to at least suspend the RAC audits, which they said they would do for a while."
2. "Amazon and Walmart have no business in healthcare." — Robert Peinert, Jr., MD, an orthopedic surgeon in Harlingen, Texas, on how outside forces will affect healthcare in the U.S.
"They will reduce it to a cookbook assessment of disease and will provide care at the lowest common denominator, mainly via nurse clinicians. Complex, innovative care and major scientific breakthroughs do not fit in or belong in systems such as that which governs Amazon and Walmart. The areas where these marketing systems might help would be in healthcare access and purchasing and the areas of medical logistics."
3. "I always liked competition because it allows us to understand the good things about our rivals." — Alexander Vaccaro, MD, president of Philadelphia-based Rothman Orthopaedic Institute, on his outlook on the practice's expansion into Florida.
"Rivals encourage us to be more competitive in terms of value-based healthcare. What do they do better than we do? Let's imitate the best in class, and let's try to beat them when it comes to quality of care and cost.
"When you're the only one around in your area, you develop a sense of complacency, and I think costs go up. I encourage competition. Florida is a great market. Orlando is growing at an estimated 300,000 people per year, so the market is expanding, and they need healthcare, especially the aging population. I've always been a big supporter of competition. It sort of stimulates us at the Rothman Institute to be more competitive ourselves."