April 26 (UPI) -- Researchers at Rice University found that higher costs for complex cancer surgery may be an indicator for worse quality of care in patients.
The study, a collaboration between Rice University and the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, analyzed Medicare hospital and physician claims from patients 65 and older from all 50 states between 2005 and 2009.
Researchers analyzed six different cancer surgeries -- colectomy, rectal resection, pulmonary lobectomy, pneumonectomy, esophagectomy and pancreatic resection -- for the study.
"Basically, our analyses indicate that the lower patient costs achieved by high-volume surgeons can be explained by their lower occurrence of processes of care that are associated with surgical complications, as well as their higher use of processes of care associated with better outcomes," Dr. Thomas Aloia, associate professor in the Department of Surgical Oncology, Division of Surgery, at MD Anderson, said in a press release.
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Processes of care are actions health care providers take to improve the quality of care for patients and patient outcomes, such as placing arterial lines or epidural anesthesia.
Researchers initially found that surgeons who performed two operations of a specific type in a year compared to one could see patient cost savings for four of the six cancer operations, from 0.6 percent for colectomy to 2.8 percent for pancreatic resection. Savings were even greater for the highest-volume surgeons.
But when researchers accounted for the processes of care in each patient's treatment, the cost savings decreased by 50 percent for operations like pancreatic resection, and completely disappeared for colectomy.
"People mistakenly think that higher spending in health care implies higher quality care," Vivian Ho, chair of health economics at Rice's Baker Institute for Public Policy and director of the Institute's Center for Health and Biosciences, said. "In this case, higher spending is a marker of worse patient care. The results imply that patients who need cancer surgery can expect lower costs and better outcomes with high-volume surgeons."
The study was published in the journal Surgery.
