Your Academy is currently working with a consultant group to set up an alternative payment model for spine care. The consultants were hired to provide us with data and design. The aim of the model is to show that a referral by a primary care physician to a physiatrist will be less costly than a referral to a surgeon. Several of your colleagues are members of a technical advisory panel, to ensure that the model is set up in such a way that it is useful for physiatrists and to correct inadvertent clinical or study design errors.