Surgery Decision Support^™ (SDS)

Surgery Decision Support™ (SDS) is a highly targeted program focused on addressing specific medical conditions and associated elective surgical procedures where two or more medically acceptable options exist and, where patients have legitimate choices among treatment options. Often these patients are recommended to have surgery when alternative, less invasive options have not been exhausted first.  Our experience over ten years is that 24% of these procedures are unnecessary.⁽¹⁾ The program offers participants in-depth, objective, personalized, current information and high-touch support on specific medical conditions and their associated surgical procedures.

This highly-targeted decision-support program has the potential to reduce your total annual medical expenses by 2%. For example, an employer with 30,000 employees can potentially save $4.8M in direct savings through SDS.
Our results have been verified independently by actuaries and we believe, offer the most effective program available in the marketplace today, with respect to direct savings, quality improvements and overall satisfaction.

 

Our Tier 1 program includes five procedures that will maximize savings and return on investment for you while providing significant quality improvements and high satisfaction.

Tier 1 SDS procedures include:

• Low back surgery
• Hysterectomy
• Knee replacement
• Hip replacement
• Obesity surgery

We can also support three additional highly-variable surgical procedures that offer moderate savings and return on investment, as well as significant quality improvements.

Tier 2 SDS procedures include:

• Coronary artery bypass graft (CABG)
• Lumpectomy/Mastectomy
• Prostatectomy

For those requiring surgery, we help them choose the best hospitals and providers by using our doctor and hospital selection guides. We also help patients prepare for planned surgical procedures by making interactive tutorials and online patient coping resources available.
SDS is an integral component of the MDS program or is also available as an option to purchase on a stand-alone basis.

 

 
SDS PROGRAM IMPACT AND OUTCOMES

Financial Savings —

• 24% reduction in surgical rates (across all surgeries)
• One customer realized $1.7M in direct savings with only 62 cases
  
  [Source for all figures: CMR book-of-business outcomes, 2007 – 2009.]

Quality and clinical improvements
In surveying 76% of SDS program participants, we found that:

• Patients switched to treatment considered best practice at the rate of 40%, which is a major goal of our programs, not just surgery avoidance
• Reported improved quality of life or improved comfort from 97% of patients
• Participants reported improved wellness and treatment compliance at the frequency of 80%
• Patients moved to a hospital with better outcomes at the rate of 22%
  
  Not only do patients frequently decide against surgery in the short-term with SDS, but they maintain their decision over the long-term as well. A long-term study we performed on these patients show that after three years, 86% still never had surgery⁽²⁾ and the 14% who did, were pleased that they didn’t have surgery sooner than they really needed to. [Source: CMR Customer Longer-Term Satisfaction & Outcome Study, April 2006 – December, 2008.]