How Hospitals Confront New Technology

Dear CSS Members and Colleagues:

As the next annual meeting of the CSS will consider Disruptive Technologies for Shoulder Arthroplasty, I thought it appropriate to share an article with you about how hospitals must deal with the dilemma of technology adoption and return on investment. We can consider many recent technologies which have benefited patients, such as cross-linked Poly for joint replacement. Initially hospitals had to consider the added cost over conventional poly. In my opinion, the central problem to adoption of all new technology is one of value creation. The issue is how do we measure the value and who captures it. Moreover, if you are the customer, namely the hospital, how do you absorb the added cost of such technology and what is your ROI? In the case of cross-linked poly the value is clearly in the durability of the implant and this is captured by the patient.

Consider these issues in context of this article as one thing is for sure. Everyone who is a member of CSS believes as did Codman that innovation is central to creation of value. His words were “Give me something different for there is a chance of it being better.”

Kind Regards,

Jon “JP” Warner, MD

Founder, CSS