Dollars and Sense: The Business of Pediatric Surgery

This study evaluated North American pediatric surgeons' opinions and knowledge of business and economics in medicine and their perceptions of trends in their healthcare delivery environment.

We conducted an elective online survey of 1119 American Pediatric Surgical Association members. Over 8 mo, we iteratively developed the survey focused on four areas: opinion, knowledge, current practice environment, and trends in practice environment over the past 5 y.

We received 227 (20.3%) complete surveys from pediatric surgeons. One hundred ninety four (85.5%) perceive healthcare as a business and most (85.9%) believe healthcare decisions may affect patients' out-of-pocket expenses. More than half (51.1%) of surgeons believe it has become more challenging to perform emergent cases and most believe staff quality has decreased for elective (56.4%) and emergent (63.0%) cases over the past 5 y.

Pediatric surgeons recognize that medicine is a business and have concerns regarding the decreasing quality of operating room staff and the increasing difficulty providing surgical care over the last 5 y.