“Every field of medicine has more than the public realizes of stuff like this where the evidence doesn’t really support it that much,” Saini said. “When you do it across all of American health care, it’s actually a significant piece of the health care cost.” More

“Like everyone in America, older people with back pain deserve safe, evidence-based care that doesn’t waste taxpayer dollars,” Vikas Saini, M.D., president of the Lown Institute, said in a release. “Reducing unnecessary procedures, particularly invasive ones that carry grave risks, is a moral imperative.” More

Hospitals conducted more than 200,000 unnecessary spinal fusion/laminectomy or vertebroplasty procedures on Medicare beneficiaries 65 and older from 2020 to 2022. This generated about $1.9 billion in wasted Medicare spending, according to a new analysis released by the Lown Institute. More

"We're not doing this just to draw attention to the fact that there is unnecessary surgery," Lown president Vikas Saini, MD, told MedPage Today. "We're doing it to track how much, so people who want to do something about it have a guideline." More

U.S. hospitals performed more than 200,000 unnecessary back surgeries on older adults that cost taxpayers $1.9 billion, according to a new analysis of Medicare and Medicare Advantage claims data. More

The goal of Wasteful and Inappropriate Service Reduction is to “help protect American taxpayers” by “helping patients and providers avoid unnecessary or inappropriate care,” according to the government. The 17 affected services are commonly overused or historically have had a higher risk of waste, fraud and abuse, according to the Lown Institute, a health care think tank More

As much as half of all spinal fusions don’t alleviate pain — why do doctors perform so many? More