If a region has a high rate of a type of a surgery, patients should be asking their physicians whether another treatment might work, Shannon said. The authors of the study said patients should consider these factors before undergoing an elective procedure. The researchers said their study, which also looked at 12 other elective procedures, was intended to show how a region's surgical rates vary widely, trends that are driven almost entirely by the surgical habits of a region's doctors. "Maybe people in San Diego are getting too few."
"We don't know what the right number is," Shannon said. It's possible the north state's rates are ideal while other regions are falling behind, she said. Shannon said part of the difficulty in interpreting the data on knee surgeries is there's no standard for how many surgeries should be performed in a community. Maribeth Shannon, director of the California HealthCare Foundation's market and policy monitor program, said data prior to the Redding heart surgery scandal showed rates of heart surgeries that were much more extreme than the area's knee surgery spikes. However, Brownlee's co-author cautions the figures don't necessarily mean surgeries are being performed unnecessarily ? an especially touchy subject in Redding's medical community, which was rocked in 2002 by an FBI investigation into allegations doctors were performing unnecessary heart procedures to boost the bottom line at what was then Redding Medical Center. Helena area in the coming years, now that Coon's practice has moved there.Īccording to the Napa Valley Joint Center, last year the Coon Joint Replacement Institute performed more than 900 joint replacements and was expected to perform approximately 1,500 joint replacements this year. She also wrote the book "Overtreated: Why Too Much Medicine is Making Us Sicker and Poorer."īrownlee said she wouldn't be surprised to see an increase in the rates of knee surgeries in the St. "Often, it's an individual surgeon or an individual practice that accounts for these numbers."īrownlee is acting director of the New America Foundation Health Policy Program, an organization that advocates for health care reform. "Oh sure, if he's doing that many," Brownlee said. Shannon Brownlee, one of the authors of the study, said that although it didn't look into specific physicians' surgical rates, Coon could have been driving the region's knee surgery trends. Hospital officials at the time said orthopedic surgeries accounted for one-third of the hospital's surgery volume, and three-quarters of that volume was because of Coon. Elizabeth Community Hospital in Red Bluff. He routinely performed surgeries simultaneously in two operating rooms at St. He said it enabled him to perform eight or nine surgeries per day, a rate much higher than those of his peers. Helena clinic.īut in a 2007 interview, Coon credited his ability to perform so many surgeries to a minimally invasive robotic procedure he helped pioneer. Helena two years ago, told the Record Searchlight he performed 600 knee replacements each year, more than any doctor west of the Mississippi River.Ĭoon declined an interview request this week made through the office manager at his St. Thomas Coon, a knee surgeon who, before moving his practice to St.
With the exception of Fortuna, those regions are all well within the referral area of Dr. At 209 percent of the state average, the Fall River Mills hospital service region had the highest rate of knee surgeries in the state.įortuna, Red Bluff, Weaverville and Redding round out the top five on the list of areas with knee surgery rates at or near twice the state average.
Several north state regions top the state in knee replacement surgery rates, prompting researchers who studied the data to question whether a prolific former Red Bluff surgeon might have established that trend.Ī study released earlier this fall by the California HealthCare Foundation found that between 20, Fall River Mills residents underwent knee replacements at more than twice the state average rate. To read a copy of the study report and peruse the north state's surgery rates, click here.
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