Two core premises underlie MSI's mission to broaden access to surgical choice and quality

Mar 10 2010

Two core premises underlie Mobile Surgery International's (MSI) mission to broaden access to surgical choice and quality. The first is that patients (and payers) should be able to make decisions about surgical options based upon access to complete information up front about all of the necessary services associated with their surgical procedure, the skill and expertise of the surgeon carrying out the procedure, and the total costs involved. The second is that waste should be eliminated and savings passed on to patients (and payers).

"For surgical care, individual patients and even major payers have to invest extraordinary resources in trying to understand what they are 'buying' and how much it will cost," says Arnon Krongrad, MD, president and chief executive offer of MSI. "The varied elements of surgical care are commonly fragmented. They include services provided by hospitals, surgeons, anesthesiologists, pathologists, physical therapists, and others...and each of these services is often administered and negotiated separately. In addition, it is not usually clear to the consumer which element is necessary (let alone which element is not in fact necessary at all), so waste and inefficiency creep in. Finally, the cost to the payer (whether an uninsured patient or a major, self-insured employer) is often not fixed. Additional, unexpected charges can make it impossible to budget with any degree of accuracy."

MSI has now posted detailed descriptions for two specific surgical service packages on the Company web site at www.emeseye.com/services. These two "all-in" packages (addressing total knee replacement and radical prostatectomy for appropriately qualified patients) are designed to simplify patient and payer negotiation of the costs of specific surgical episodes by encompassing every predictable element of quality surgery, by openly defining and communicating these elements, and by fixing the specific cost for such surgical episodes.

"In the case of prostate cancer surgery," stated Krongrad, "quality varies depending principally on the skill, expertise, and focus of the surgeon, which may not be transparent to the patient or the payer; charges have historically not been finalized until after service is rendered; and those charges can vary by as much as 500% depending on such clinically irrelevant factors as geography and overhead.

"MSI has now developed a fully transparent, all-inclusive service for the treatment of prostate cancer by laparoscopic radical prostatectomy. Our surgeon-driven business model has eliminated waste and lowered charges relative to historical retail by as much as 70%. We have also standardized quality and cost across geography: a qualified patient will get the same quality and pay the same amount whether he elects to be treated by us in Kansas, in Florida, in Mexico, or in the Caribbean. And the cost is fixed up front: when the surgeon decides, in the middle of the operation, to take out another lymph node or use one more suture, the cost for the overall procedure will not suddenly go up.

"MSI has applied the same business model for uncomplicated, unilateral total knee replacement. Our all-inclusive, fully transparent, quality-driven service includes not only specialist surgeons but aggressive, early physical therapy at specialized rehabilitation facilities. Our costs are not only low by general standards, but they are fixed: the qualified patient or the payer will know what they are purchasing up front, and the full costs for the necessary surgical services."

MSI offers these fixed-cost surgical packages at prices that are dependent on household income for un- and under-insured patients and that are dependent on volume for other payers.