Benefits
- Real-time, continuous oversight is the standard of care across IONM practices.
- IONM services are utilized by health systems and hospitals across the country, including academic institutions, major medical centers, community hospitals large and small and rural hospitals in underserved areas.
- During surgery, supervising IONM professionals continuously monitor the patient’s neurophysiologic signals to detect adverse changes.
To decrease morbidity and improve outcomes, interpretation of neurophysiologic data must be instantaneous (real-time) and communicated to the surgeon as quickly as possible. - A large, multicenter study demonstrated that somatosensory evoked potentials (SSEP’s) reduced the risk of paraplegia by 60% in spinal surgeries (Nuwer et al., 1995).
- Erickson et al., (2005) demonstrated that IONM is capable of substantially reducing injury in surgeries that pose a risk to spinal cord integrity with a recommendation that intraoperative monitoring be used for all cases of spinal surgery for which there is a risk of spinal cord injury.
- Billing of professional CPT codes 95940 and 95941 require the monitoring professional must have the capacity for ongoing continuous or immediate contact and must be dedicated to monitoring in real-time, exclusively.
- Code 95941 (remote oversight) requires the monitoring of neurophysiological data that is collected from the operating room continuously on-line in real time via a secure data link.