Back Pain and Surgery

Back Pain and Surgery

Collaboration > Toolkits and Purchaser Guides > Back Pain and Surgery

Spotlight on: Back Pain and Surgery

The Minnesota Health Action Group has created this Purchaser’s Guide to help employers increase the value of supply-sensitive care1 that is subject to overuse or inappropriate use. The information in this guide provides an outline of work the Action Group and some of its members did to address back pain and spine surgery. The Guide can be helpful to other members who want to apply a similar approach to these and other conditions. Additional guides will be developed on maternity care and joint replacements after these projects have been completed.

“I like walking into a vendor meeting with the confidence The Action Group’s Employer Purchaser Guides give me. I can set expectations and hold all my vendors accountable to a single standard to ensure my employees are receiving the best possible care — and outcomes. -Beth Lundholm, State of Minnesota

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To see how Beth Lundholm of the State of Minnesota uses the Back Pain Purchaser Guide, click here. To read or download this guide, click here.

1Supply sensitive care includes services that are overused because of the supply of providers such as hospital beds, physician specialists, imaging equipment etc. available in a particular area or region of the country. According to the Dartmouth Atlas Project, supply-sensitive care varies widely across the U.S.