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Government Restrictions on Weight Loss Surgeries Limit Access for Poor, Underinsured Patients |
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From EurekAlert! - Breaking News: Thresholds limiting bariatric surgeries to high-volume centers disproportionately restrict access for poor and underinsured patients, populations which are among the most in need of them, an analysis led by UT Southwestern Medical Center researchers shows. Government-imposed restrictions currently mandate a 125-case annual threshold for facilities permitted to perform bariatric surgeries under Medicare and Medicaid because some studies have identified better outcomes for centers performing large volumes of bariatric surgeries. "Restricting surgeries to high-volume centers has the effect of limiting bariatric surgery as an option for many poor and underinsured who rely on Medicare and Medicaid," said Dr. Edward Livingston, senior author of the study appearing in the October edition of Archives of Surgery. Nearly three quarters of hospitals offering bariatric surgery are considered low-volume facilities under the 125-case threshold, thereby leaving few centers available for impoverished populations. Such restrictions further limit medical expertise for morbidly obese patients by reducing the number of hospitals well-equipped and properly staffed to handle the special needs of these cases. Accounting for the specific health risks of patients, however, often eliminates the advantages seen for high-volume centers, the analysis showed. In either case, the overall risk was small, as the survival rate at low-income centers was 99.66 percent. That's important because studies indicate that non-surgical therapies for morbidly obese patients are uniformly unsuccessful for sustained weight loss. UT Southwestern's Center for Minimally Invasive Surgery is one of only seven facilities in North America, and the only one in Texas, to be accredited by the American College of Surgeons.
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