Great News for Medicare Patients Needing Hip Replacement Surgery By Maria K. Todd, PhD, MHA, SGSC Director of Business Development Great news! Patients no longer need to be admitted to a hospital for hip replacement surgery as of January 1, 2021!
explained Dr. Hicken. “Because muscle is moved out of the way rather than cut into, patients enjoy quicker healing and less pain.
Unless the patient is frail and needs to be hospitalized, Medicare has followed the current trend that has been increasing over the past eighteen months to move hip replacement surgery cases to the independent outpatient facility setting. The reason? Lower costs to patients and taxpayers with minimal, if any, reduction in safety and outcomes. Because of concerns about COVID-19, most inpatient surgeries around the nation have been suspended indefinitely, causing patients to wait in pain. Going forward, cases that will be approved for hospital inpatient stays are limited to significantly difficult revisions, very sick patients, and emergency traumas. St. George Surgical Center (SGSC) surgeons have been performing hip replacement surgeries since 2018 in the outpatient setting with excellent safety, low infection rates, great clinical outcomes, and very high patient satisfaction. SGSC is also the only independent outpatient surgery facility in southern Utah that is licensed for overnight stays, and in a few weeks, SGSC will receive an upgrade to its robotics technology to increase accuracy and precision on both total and partial knee replacements and eventually, total and partial hip replacements.
Gregory J. Hicken, MD, trained at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester Minnesota, which has consistently been ranked in the top three centers for orthopedic surgery for the last twenty years. He worked with many of the thirty-plus consultants there on complex joint reconstruction problems and has been using computer navigation and robotics for the past twenty years to increase the accuracy and safety of joint replacement surgery. He pioneered new methods of pain control and moved a majority of his joint replacement procedures to outpatient surgery centers without compromising quality of care or comfort.
Most of the hip replacement surgeries performed at SGSC are done by “direct anterior approach.” According to Dr. Gregory J. Hicken of Elite Healthcare of Southern Utah, the surgeon determines if the patient is a good candidate for this procedure. “While not everybody is a candidate for direct anterior approach hip replacement surgery, it is a modification of a seventy-year-old surgical approach,” he said.
The direct anterior approach has several advantages over the way other surgeons in St. George perform the procedure. “For one thing, the direct anterior approach to hip replacement is muscle sparing,” 54 www.saintgeorgewellness.com
“Using the direct anterior approach, no hip precautions are required after the surgery and the risk of hip dislocation after surgery is significantly less than with other approaches,” continued Dr. Hicken. “While the patient usually recovers quicker than with other surgical approaches, when total hip replacements are compared a year after surgery, there’s not a significant difference. By comparison, there tends to be a higher rate of trochanteric bursitis and limp following the anterolateral approach and a higher rate of dislocation following the posterior approach.” The implant that is used at SGSC is mobile bearing. This implant increases the stability of the hip and lengthens the longevity of the implant by decreasing wear. “With home help support, patients recover better at home with family nearby,” added Dr. Hicken. “SGSC’s patients also benefit from the new and improved pain management approaches used at SGSC that use fewer opioid medications.”
Robotic-assisted technology does not add extra cost to the patient or insurer. Patients with traditional Medicare and a secondary insurance usually have zero out-of-pocket cost to have their hip or knee replacement surgery at SGSC. They will receive additional advantages and services not otherwise available in southern Utah. To learn more, join SGSC and Dr. Hicken for Lunch with the Doc at 11:30 a.m. on January 22, 2021, at Magleby’s Restaurant where the doctor will explain the advantages of robotics-assisted hip and knee replacements and answer questions from the audience. There’s no cost or obligation to attend. RSVP to 435-705-7039 to reserve your seat. Don’t wait! Seating is limited, and half the seats are already claimed!
