Recent Trends in Medicare Utilization and Reimbursement for Spinal Cord Stimulators: 2000-2019

Spinal cord stimulators (SCS) allow spine surgeons to provide relief for patients who suffer from chronic pain due to several disorders, such as failed back surgery syndrome, complex regional pain syndrome, and neuropathy. Despite this, there remains a paucity of data regarding the utilization and reimbursement of SCS. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to evaluate the monetary and procedural trends of spinal cord stimulators among the Medicare database from 2000 to 2019.

Medicare Part B National Summary Data files, which are publicly available, were used. These files contain data from the years 2000-2019 on all services billed to Medicare within that time frame. Each service is given a Current Procedural Terminology (CPT) code and the number of times that service was performed, as well as the total physician Medicare charges and reimbursements for each service annually are included in that data set. The CPT codes for percutaneous and open placement of spinal cord stimulators were identified: 63650 and 63655, respectively. The total allowed services allowed charges and actual payments were isolated from the data set for each year for each CPT code. The total allowed charges and actual payments for the year were then divided by the total allowed services to find and trend the allowed charges and actual payment for each individual service performed for both percutaneous and open placement of spinal cord stimulators.

There were 992,372 Medicare-approved total percutaneous spinal cord stimulator operations and 99,736 Medicare-approved total open spinal cord stimulator operations from 2000 to 2019. Medicare paid $1.02 billion (2019 U.S. dollars) in reimbursement to physicians for percutaneous spinal cord stimulator operations and nearly $145 million (2019 U.S. dollars) in reimbursement to physicians for open spinal cord stimulator operations. From the years 2000 to 2019, there was an average 21.9% increase annually in Medicare-approved percutaneous spinal stimulator placement operations and a 18.4% increase annually in Medicare-approved open spinal stimulator placement operations. During this time, there was also an average 8.7% increase annually in Medicare reimbursement per each percutaneous spinal stimulator placement operation and a 9.1% increase annually in Medicare reimbursement per each open spinal stimulator placement operation.

The results of this study show that the number of percutaneous and open procedures have steadily increased from 2000 to 2019. Reimbursement per procedure has also increased steadily over this time. Identifying these trends is important to promote research into costs of these surgeries and ensure adequate resource allocation.