A Dwindling Matter: An Analysis of Medicare Reimbursement for Endocrine Surgery Procedures from 2000-23.

OBJECTIVE: To evaluate Medicare reimbursement trends for endocrine surgeries from 2000-23. BACKGROUND: As the population ages, demand for endocrine surgeries is expected to increase. Understanding reimbursement trends is essential to ensure the financial sustainability of endocrine surgery. METHODS: Data were extracted from Medicare Inpatient and Outpatient Hospital datasets, National Summary, and Physician Fee Look-up Files for nine common thyroid, parathyroid and adrenal surgeries. Data were adjusted for inflation. Descriptive statistics, compound annual growth rate (CAGR), and linear regression models were built to evaluate practice and reimbursement trends. RESULTS: From 2000-23, there was a 63.8% increase in endocrine surgery volume. However, inflation-adjusted average procedure reimbursements decreased by 43.2% from $1709 to $972 (CAGR -2.4%), which is the largest decrease for any surgical subspecialty reported in the published literature. At the current CAGR, the average estimated reimbursement is projected to decrease to $868 by 2030 (P<0.001). Average facility reimbursements for inpatient and outpatient hospitalizations increased. However, substantial practice pattern shifts in the study period led to decreased overall facility reimbursements, with a $17.9 million decrease in total inpatient reimbursements between 2016-21 that was only partially offset by a $3.2 million increase in outpatient hospital reimbursements. CONCLUSION: Medicare procedure reimbursements for endocrine surgeries have been outpaced by inflation, with large decreases since 2000. Concurrent changes in practice patterns have also resulted in markedly fewer inpatient stays leading to lower total facility reimbursements. Our data raise concern over the financial sustainability of the endocrine surgery field as the demand for endocrine surgery procedures increases.

A Foreign Body in an Unexpected Place-Ingested Hardware Nails Within the Appendix.

Foreign body ingestion is commonly encountered in clinical practice, with over 100,000 cases reported annually in the United States. The majority of objects pass through the gastrointestinal tract spontaneously and without consequence, with fewer than 1% of objects requiring surgical intervention. Foreign bodies have rarely been found lodged within the appendix. We report the therapeutic management of a young patient who ingested over 30 hardware nails. The patient originally underwent an esophagogastroduodenoscopy with attempted removal from the stomach and duodenum, though only 3 nails were successfully extracted. The patient was able to excrete all but 2 of the nails that remained localized to the right lower quadrant without perforation to their gastrointestinal tract. Laparoscopic exploration with fluoroscopic guidance was performed and both foreign bodies were found lodged within the appendix. The patient made an uneventful recovery after laparoscopic appendectomy.

Inverted Meckel's Diverticulum Causing Adult Intussusception after Blunt Trauma.

Meckel's diverticulum is an uncommon though well described clinical entity. There are few cases of a Meckel's diverticulum having been identified as the lead point for adult intussusception. We report the surgical management of a 45-year-old patient with an inverted Meckel's diverticulum causing distal ileal intussusception after blunt abdominal trauma requiring small bowel resection.

Perforated Appendicitis With Migrated Inguinal Mesh Involvement.

Mesh-plug hernioplasty has been recognized as a safe and effective surgical repair for primary inguinal hernias and is a common procedure in the United States. Critics of the mesh-plug system describe erosion, migration, and chronic pain as reasons not to employ mesh plugs in primary hernia repair. To our knowledge, mesh graft infection associated with perforated acute appendicitis has been documented only once before in the surgical literature, highlighting an exceedingly rare but possible complication. We report the therapeutic management of a 50-year-old male with perforated appendicitis associated with a mesh-plug from previous open herniorrhaphy requiring mesh explantation and small bowel resection.