$3,607 per member per year. That’s the headline number from our recent Optum MSK Cost Savings Study, and on paper, it’s everything you’d want a cost savings finding to be. Statistically significant. Independently validated. Defensible in any room.
But numbers in healthcare don’t exist on paper – they live in people. Every dollar of avoided spend traces back to someone who took a different path through the system, ended up in a different place, and lived through something different because of it.
That’s where the real story starts.
What $3,607 Actually Represents
That $1,041 in avoided outpatient surgery costs?
It’s someone who didn’t end up under anesthesia for a procedure they didn’t need. Someone who didn’t spend six weeks recovering. Someone who didn’t carry the small but real risk every surgery carries.
The $193 in avoided ER spend?
It’s someone who didn’t sit in a waiting room for 4 hours with their back seized up, wondering what was wrong and how much it was going to cost them. Someone who had a provider they could call instead – a provider that gave them peace of mind and answers about the source of their pain without unnecessary interventions.
The fewer downstream physical therapy visits, the lower professional services costs, the flatter cost trajectory across the year that followed?
Those are people who got better and moved on with their lives. People who went back to work, back to their kids, back to the activities they thought they might have to give up.
The Human Story:
It’s easy to forget, especially in all the conversation about per-member-per-year figures and statistical significance, that every data point in a claims analysis is a person who lived through something.
Airrosti patients cost less because the care works. Pain gets resolved instead of managed. Patients leave their first visit with a plan, and they actually start getting better. They avoid unnecessarily triggering the chain reaction of imaging, specialists, and procedures that defines so much of MSK care.
For the people responsible for healthcare spend, that’s the most important thing the Optum study confirmed. There are savings to be had, yes. More importantly though, those savings come from a fundamentally better experience for the patients you cover.
Read the Full Study
The complete Optum MSK Cost Savings Study is available now, including the full methodology, the category-by-category cost breakdown, and the data behind every finding referenced here. Click the button above to access it, and feel free to reach out to us for more information.
