I was looking at the Florida Health Finder site that compares hospitals, and I decided to compare three hospitals: Jupiter Medical Center, which is in Palm Beach county where we lived for many years; Leesburg Regional Medical Center, where I am going in 2 weeks; and Largo Medical Center, where several tennis friends have gone for partial knees and/or arthroscopic surgery. The results were interesting.

The category was Full or Partial Knee Replacement; The age group was Seniors (65+); the time period was calendar year, 2009.

Hosp. # procedures $ Low $High length of stay

JMC 200 63,029 75,477 4.1 days

Largo       936 34,095 53,951 2.5

Leesbg 353 36,339 42,471 3.3

A couple of things pop out at you. One, the cost for the surgery in Palm Beach County vs. the cost in Leesburg and Largo, but no surprise there, really, since PBC is an expensive place to live. Add to that the longer stay, which puzzles me, and that also helps explain the higher costs.

Two, the number of procedures in Largo far exceeds the others (and is the highest of all the hospitals in Florida, also). The length of stay is also considerably shorter.

I have been to two of the seminars by the Largo group, and was put off by the degree of the marketing they do, including referring to the knee replacements as "resurfacing," and the selling of the amenities at the facility. In addition, at the end of the seminars the presenters walk around the room with cell phones dialed into the appointment desk so that participants can make an appointment on the spot. This was a bit of a hard sell, I thought. In addition, they provided pages and pages of references to call. The interesting thing to me was that 90% of the references had partials, not full, which probably accounts for the lower length of stay.

I did not see a doctor at Largo; the conclusions I have drawn come from the seminars and the statistics.

I also looked at the numbers for all ages, not just seniors. An additional category was added: 15 day readmission. Largo's, at 1.77%, was the lowest of the 3 by far. Jupiter was highest with 3.12%, and Leesburg next with 2.76%. My only thought on this is that the rate for Largo is low because PKR are a lesser procedure in the first place.