ECRI, an independent healthcare and patient safety nonprofit, has launched a new AI-powered tool – SurgiSmartIQ – that equips healthcare providers with unprecedented insights into primary hip and knee implant utilization, clinical use variation, and pricing data for primary joint orthopedic procedures.
Nearly 1.3 million primary total joint arthroplasty procedures were performed in 2019, according to Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality reports. As the population ages, primary hip and knee replacement procedures are among the fastest-growing procedures. With demand and costs on the rise, coupled with changes in patient dynamics and surgeon preference, healthcare leaders have struggled to get a clear picture of price and clinical use utilization and variation, a press release said.
According to ECRI’s supply chain experts, the cost of implants can quickly balloon driven by the variety of manufacturers, components, and ancillary products on the market. All these elements drive complexity in supply chain management and reduce the ability to truly manage variation.
ECRI launched SurgiSmartIQ to deliver near time information on actionable cost savings opportunities, clinical variation, and procedure and contract compliance information. SurgiSmartIQ pulls from the world’s largest GPO-agnostic healthcare price benchmarking database for capital and supplies from over 3,000 healthcare facilities.
SurgiSmartIQ identifies all combinations of components used by orthopedic surgeons, associated costs, and usage trends. The tool generates comprehensive reports of savings opportunities based on price benchmarking, product utilization, and standardization opportunities. By including all the device components and accessories at the construct level, plus major manufacturers’ rebates and inventory purchase discounts, SurgiSmartIQ reveals the complete, total cost of orthopedic procedures.
“There is truly nothing like this on the market today,” said Marcus Schabacker, ECRI president and CEO. “Until now, it has been impossible for leaders in orthopedic care to access this level of insights in implant selection, preference, utilization and cost. Other tools that provide some price benchmarking only pull data from certain GPOs, omitting massive data sets required to make informed purchasing decisions. We have already helped clients identify millions of dollars in savings across large health systems and surgery centers with SurgiSmartIQ.”
“In our mission to make healthcare safer, more equitable and more affordable, data transparency is critical,” added Schabacker. “Through SurgiSmartIQ, ECRI can identify where orthopedic practices and hospitals are overpaying for supplies and uncover trends in the use of implants and accessories.”
