Question: Will health insurance pay for the neurostimulation and/or the pain pump?

Dr. Nagy Mekhail: Medicare payees and most of the major payers pay for the stimulation, but with any new technique especially expensive technique in medicine, we need to provide the data that it is effective and cost-effective. We did the research in our institution here that will appear in publication in early next year where we showed that by proper patient selection we can decrease healthcare utilizations significantly and actually every patient, and this study saved about $17,000 per year from utilization of healthcare resources.

They visit the physician less, they go the emergency room less, they require fewer procedures, less X-rays, and if you calculate all this, actually it is cost-effective and adds this improvement of the quality of life which you cannot put a price tag on.

Dr. Ken Follet: Neurostimulators and pain pumps have been around now many years. They are accepted as standard of care for the treatment of chronic pain and virtually every insurance carrier pays for the surgery and maintenance of the devices.