Behavioral Economics and Physician Board Meetings: Opportunity Cost, Regret, and Their Mitigation in Orthopaedic Surgery

Health care is a business. Health care providers must become familiar with terms such as opportunity costs, the potential loss or gain when one choice is made in lieu of another. The purpose of this study was to calculate the opportunity cost of two orthopaedic surgery society board meetings and discuss these in the context of behavioral economics and regret. A literature search was conducted to determine an orthopaedic surgeon’s average yearly salary, hours worked per week, and weeks worked per year. The details of two orthopaedic surgery professional society meetings that one senior author (CSR) attended were used to calculate opportunity cost. Although the true benefits are multifactorial and difficult to objectively quantify, awareness of the cost–benefit ratio can help guide time and resource management to maximize the return on investment while minimizing buyer’s remorse and perhaps influence the media by which medical meetings are held in the future. (Journal of Surgical Orthopaedic Advances 27(1):10–13, 2018)
Key words: behavioral economics, buyer’s regret, opportunity cost