Awareness of Surgeons in Saudi Arabia About the Surgical Costs and Investigations: Multicenter Study.

Objective: To investigate the level of knowledge and awareness of the cost of the currently used blood investigations, imaging studies, admission cost, and surgical instrument among surgeons in Saudi Arabia.

Design: It was a cross-section study conducted in Riyadh city, the capital of Saudi Arabia.

Setting: Multihealth centers including main University hospital, Military hospitals, and Ministry of health hospitals. All surgeons in the health facilities were invited to participate in the study. A questionnaire has been formulated, and distributed to all participants. It was composed of 3 sections such as: demographic data, awareness about the cost, and physicians' perception about the cost and the attitude of their institution toward cost practice.

Result: Totally, 296 participants were enrolled in the study. More than half of the respondents were females (53.3%). Nearly two-thirds were in the young age group (30-40 years), 41.2% were residents. Only 4.4%, 3.4%, 8.4%, and 3.7% of the surgeons were fully aware of the cost of blood investigations, imaging studies, surgical instruments/prosthesis, and the medication that they prescribe, respectively. Most of them mentioned that their institute neither encourages them to consider a cost-effective practice (86.9%) nor monitor how cost effective is their practice (86.2%).

Conclusion: Surgeon's knowledge and awareness about the cost of different medical procedures were insufficient. Surgeons' knowledge and attitudes about costs of care can be improved through the use of audit and feedback with patient cost and charge data, which could be attained through the inclusion of audit and feedback as part of a curriculum teaching.