[dshobbies]

Wow Mark, I just wrote a thoughtful and elequant response to your request but hit a wrong button and it vanished, forever!!!!!

Abuses to our system include J&J’s greed in charging the U.S. outrageous prices for the Charite, causing in part, the ins industry’s denial of adr coverage. Doctors, ill equipped due to personal inexperience, performing procedures which result in negative outcomes necessitating supplementary medical care further skews sightable statistics. Though one is needed for the patient community, would an outcome database demonstrating ‘bad surgeons’ result in their personal patient profiles being completely discounted by risk management statisticians?

Doctors are not required to inform their patients about alternative procedures that have not yet been approved by the FDA regardless of their position in current trials and any possible benefit to their patient. Some doctors will purposely misinform patients about procedures they personally don’t perform. Does this apply to informed consent? Is it even provable? Is this matter of he said/she said even enforceable?

Though all of the above is applicable not only to the spinal community but to our entire medical society, it is nonetheless pertinent to abuses, causation against reimbursement and negatively impacts new technology, all of which are relevant to marketing, reimbursement and regulation.

Since I hail from Brooklyn, keep me informed about a spiney gathering.

Dale