The high price of technology: factors affecting hip implant costs

As the cost of new technology for hip implants escalates, financial managers are finding an increasing amount of the DRG payment is spent on the technology itself and not nursing care, maintenance, or overhead. Four factors affect the cost and quality of hip implant prosthetics--the materials, design, fixation, and instrumentation--and must be considered in the cost and quality issues associated with selecting a prosthetic device. Financial managers must be sensitive to quality issues associated with new technological advances in hip implants, and they must be able to communicate the financial impact of this new technology to the physicians who use it and the third-party payers who pay for it.