St. Francis Hospital in Hartford, Conn., which performed more than 1,500 spine procedures during the fiscal year of 2012, is launching the Spine Institute of Connecticut, according to Hartford Business report.  

Frontier Medical Device received its first FDA approval for the Lateral Locking Cage, a spine device for less invasive fusion, according to Upper Michigan Source.

Through a bundled payment agreement, Walmart employees will have access to free spine procedures at certain health systems and hospitals with no out-of-pocket cost, according to a news release published in Bloomberg Businessweek.

In a session at the 10th Annual Orthopedic, Spine and Pain Management-Driven ASC Conference in Chicago on June 14, Richard Kube, MD, a spine surgeon and founder of Prairie Spine & Pain Institute; Devin Datta, MD, a spine surgeon with the Crane Creek Surgery Center; and Michael Rimlawi, MD, a spine surgeon with the Minimally Invasive Spine Institute in Dallas, discussed issues related to moving spine procedures to ambulatory surgery centers. Jeff Leland, CEO of Blue Chip Surgical Center Partners, moderated the session.

Although many research and journal publications show that minimally invasive techniques for spine procedures are beneficial clinically, the adoption of techniques has been slow.

According to a study published in Spine, a greater volume of bone cement injected when performing vertebroplasty was positively correlated with better deformity correction outcomes, although it also increased the risk of adjacent level fracture.

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Here are the 2010 Medicare payments for 12 spine procedure approved for the ASC setting.