Neurosurgery Blog

Fifty years ago, the American Association of Neurological Surgeons (AANS) and Congress of Neurological Surgeons (CNS) recognized the growing impact of federal policy on medicine and took bold action: they established the AANS/CNS Washington Committee for Neurological Surgery. This formal presence in the nation’s capital has since served as the unified voice of neurosurgery in...

The mechanism of prior authorization necessitates that an insurance company grants approval for specific treatments before assuming financial responsibility. This includes surgery but also clinical tools such as imaging and medication. This bureaucratic impediment functions mostly as a deterrent, a labyrinthine cacophony of obfuscation. In the words of Sir Topham Hatt, it&nbs...

Prior authorization (noun): the process by which an insurance company evaluates a recommended health care service including a prescription, test, or treatment, is medically necessary and covered by the insurance plan.

Initially prior authorization was valiantly born to try and reduce unnecessary testing and control health care spending. With concerns that physicians we...