Do More Expensive Total Knee Arthroplasty Prostheses Provide Greater Improvements in Outcomes Over Less Expensive Prostheses Sold by a Physician-owned Distributorship?

Background: It is unknown whether more expensive total knee prostheses provide better improvements in patient-determined outcomes compared with less expensive prostheses. A physician-owned distributorship (POD) was created with a goal to provide lower cost implants to hospitals as an alternative to higher cost prostheses sold by the large orthopaedic implant companies. The hypothesis was that lower cost total knee prostheses would have equivalent outcomes, while resulting in lower costs to the hospitals purchasing them compared with higher cost industry-supplied knee prostheses.