HOW MUCH PENT-UP DEMAND EXISTS FOR JOINT ARTHROPLASTY? (Orthopedics This Week)
Are patients waiting until Medicare kicks in to ask for total joint arthroplasty (TJA)? And, if so, how large is that pent-up demand?
Those are the questions that a group of Mayo Clinic researchers tackled with new research that has just been published in the February 2019 edition of the Journal of Arthroplasty. The title of the new study is “Evidence of Pent-Up Demand for Total Hip and Total Knee Arthroplasty at Age 65.”
Co-author Adam J. Schwartz, M.D., M.B.A., an assistant professor of Orthopaedic Surgery at the Mayo Clinic College of Medicine in Phoenix, Arizona, outlined the background of his study to OTW. “We see a number of patients who are age 65, just getting onto Medicare as their primary health plan, and we asked if a large proportion of these patients might have had their surgery earlier if they had appropriate coverage.”
“A large number of patients seem to wait for Medicare enrollment before deciding to have a joint replacement. Policy makers need to understand the additional financial burden that the public health care system assumes because under-insured patients wait until ...
