Can we reduce healthcare waste while making Americans healthier? A new Medicare pilot program that uses AI is trying to do just that. Here’s what’s promising about the program, and which elements could use rethinking. More
Register now for the webinar "America's Most Socially Responsible Hospitals" on June 25, 2025. More
Dr Vikas Saini is a Cardiologist and President of the Lown Institute, where he leads a non-partisan think tank advocating bold ideas for a just and caring system for health. With a unique background combining philosophy and medicine, Dr. Saini has spent decades examining the intersection of ethics, evidence, and economics in healthcare. His work on the Social Responsibility Index challenges traditional hospital rankings by measuring what truly matters: equity, value, and patient outcomes rather than reputation and revenue."The enterprise of medicine has both scientific and moral dimensions, and they're inextricably balanced"
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A top ten list of the most egregious examples of profiteering and dysfunction in healthcare. More
Register now for the 2024 Shkreli Awards, hosted on January 7, 2025 at 1pm More
A south Alabama hospital was highlighted in a recent report as performing one of the highest rates of unnecessary back surgeries in the country. Over 37% of the spinal fusions performed at Mobile Infirmary were considered to be ‘unnecessary’ by the Lown Institute, a non-partisan think-tank in Massachusetts that releases an annual hospital ranking focused on patient safety and the value of care. The national rate of spinal fusion overuse is 14%, according to the analysis.
Hospitals performed more than 200,000 unnecessary back surgeries over a three-year period, according to an analysis by the Lown Institute, a health care watchdog group. The useless treatments put patients at risk for complications and cost Medicare about $2 billion, the analysis found. Furthermore, there was a large variation in rates of overuse among individual hospitals, ranging from zero to more than half of procedures. More
A report last week from the Lown Institute, a nonpartisan think tank, found hospitals and physicians performed over 200,000 unnecessary back surgeries on Medicare beneficiaries over three years, based on three years’ worth of Medicare and Medicare Advantage claims data. Those procedures cost Medicare about $2 billion between 2019 and 2022, the report said. More
The Lown Institute released new data on unnecessary back surgeries in Medicare, identifying 200,000 low-value procedures and $2 billion in Medicare dollars wasted over three years. Back surgery overuse varies widely among states, hospitals, and even doctors in the same hospital. We brought together Dr. Sohail Mirza, orthopedic surgeon and professor at Dartmouth College, and […] More
A new analysis revealed that Medicare spent roughly $2 billion over three years on unnecessary back surgeries for older adults. This alarming figure comes from research conducted by the nonpartisan Lown Institute think tank. The study examined common procedures including spinal fusion, laminectomy, and vertebroplasty, finding that an unnecessary back surgery is performed on a Medicare beneficiary every eight minutes. More than 200,000 procedures were identified as potentially unnecessary during the study period. More
Over 200,000 back surgeries were performed unnecessarily in the United States over the course of three years, according to a new Lown Institute report. In sum, these low-value back procedures cost Medicare about $2 billion after three years, roughly $600 million annually. “We trust that our doctors make decisions based on the best available evidence, but that’s not always the case,” Vikas Saini, MD, president of the Lown Institute, said in an organizational release. “In spinal surgery, as with other fields of medicine, physicians routinely overlook evidence to make exceptions, sometimes at shockingly high rates. This type of waste in Medicare is costly, both in terms of spending, and in risk to patients.” More
Hospitals performed more than 200,000 unnecessary back surgeries on Medicare beneficiaries in the U.S. over three years, according to a new analysis. More
In the last three years, U.S. hospitals performed more than 200,000 unnecessary back surgeries on Medicare beneficiaries, according to a Nov. 14 report by the Lown Institute Hospital Index. More
Every eight minutes an unnecessary back surgery is performed, costing Medicare $2 billion over the three years studied. More
Which Medicare Advantage plans do a good job at avoiding overuse for their beneficiaries... and which don't? More
A new rule from the US Food and Drug Administration just went into effect last month, requiring that mammography providers notify patients about their breast density along with their mammogram results. How does this affect patients? More
Register now for the webinar "Unnecessary Back Surgery: Older Americans put at risk while Billions in Medicare funds wasted" on November 14, 2024. More
A new study estimates that the five most common cancer screenings cost $43 billion in 2021. How exactly was this money spent and where might it have gone instead? More
Five years after the Lown Institute’s report on medication overload was published, this issue continues to be relevant in American health care. What are the harms of medication overload, how can you avoid it, and what policy changes do we need? More