SmartTRAK's Q418/FY18 Spine Market Recap

Written by Julianne Burns | 4/1/19 4:28 PM

Q418 US Spine market remains fairly flat, rounding out a stable but unremarkable FY18.

SmartTRAK’s Financial Dashboard indicates a fairly flat Q418 US Spine market, with a decline of -0.4%. Similarly, for the full year, the US Spine Market was stable, with +0.9% growth. WW revenues increased modestly with a +1% uptick for FY2018. Spine market growth as a whole slowed sequentially to +1% in Q418 from +2% in Q3 according to estimates. Growth continues to be restricted in the US Spine market by a few key factors. Payer pushback is the norm, and while most surgical practices have learned to deal with it, the environment is ever-changing with new obstacles and hurdles.

Among the many topics covered in SmartTRAK's Q418/FY18 Spine Market Recap are:

Q418, FY2018 Spine Market Highlights
Spine Summit Insight
Top 5 Players’ Q4 Performance
Q418 Regulatory Highlights

At Spine Summit, BioMedGPS learned of one new trend in Spine insurer pushback: third party authorization, in which payers are farming out the prior authorization for high volume, high cost cases to one of a handful of companies (e.g. AIM, eviCore). Indeed, last year a Needham interview with spine surgeon Dr. Frank Valone indicated that payer headwinds now offset procedural volume growth in his practice. He reports that insurance providers have significantly increased scrutiny for procedures requiring implants. A different Spine surgeon reported an uptick in pre-authorization denials over the past year, but notes that the pushback has not increased to the levels of 2012-2013 when procedure volumes were declining. For his group it is impacting mostly multi-level degenerative lumbar cases and lumbar disc replacements, along with denial of specific line items and/or brands of products...

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