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EDITOR'S PAGE
Dan O'Connor
Cash-Only Surgery
Surgery center posts all-inclusive prices for surgery online.
A
knee arthroscopy at the Surgery Center of Oklahoma is
$3,740. A tonsillectomy is $3,050. Tympanoplasty? $5,060.
Carpal tunnel release? $2,750. Those prices include the facility
fee, the surgeon's fee and the anesthesiologist's fee.
It's all right there for all — patients, payors and self-insured employers — to see, as well as bundled prices for about 100 other surgeries,
on the facility's website, surgerycenterok.com.
The prices listed are guaranteed and not negotiable, available only to
those who pay the entire amount (cashier's check or cash, please) in
advance. Not included are hardware and implants, which are priced at
cost with no mark-ups.
"For our surgeons, our website fees are the best fees they're going
to get, and our prices are 1⁄6 to 1⁄10 of what the so-called not-for-profit
hospitals across town charge," says anesthesiologist Keith Smith, MD,
the medical director and founder of the 9-OR Oklahoma City ASC, in
its 15th year of not "taking a dime of federal money." He says a local
hospital charges $22,000 for an inguinal hernia repair. The Surgery
Center of Oklahoma's price? $3,060.
The Surgery Center of Oklahoma has taken price transparency to
the extreme. And the cash-only, free-market approach couldn't be
working out any better, says Dr. Smith. The ASC with the extremely
affordable prices is extremely busy (500 to 700 cases a month) and
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O U T PAT I E N T S U R G E R Y M A G A Z I N E O N L I N E | J A N U A R Y 2013
