Discensia connects patients and insurers with a curated network of elite spine surgeons to deliver structured, multi-expert consensus on complex surgical decisions.
Discensia's proprietary protocol ensures each case is reviewed independently, then synthesized into a clear consensus report — minimizing bias and maximizing clinical value.
Patients or insurers submit imaging, clinical history, and surgical records through our secure HIPAA-compliant portal.
Our algorithm selects 3–7 spine surgeons matched by subspecialty and case complexity, ensuring no conflicts of interest and optimal expertise coverage.
Each surgeon reviews the case independently and submits a structured opinion — no group-think, no anchoring bias.
Individual opinions are aggregated into a weighted consensus report, with areas of agreement and divergence clearly documented for the patient and their physician.
A comprehensive, readable consensus report is delivered — ready for the patient's treating physician or insurance adjudication.
Patients and physicians retain access to the full case record, supporting appeals, second discussions, or future surgical planning.
Facing a major spine surgery recommendation and want independent expert validation before committing.
Seeking rigorous, defensible multi-expert review to support prior authorization and utilization management decisions.
Fellowship-trained spine surgeons who want to contribute expertise, earn consulting income, and improve patient care nationally.
Our protocol is built around peer-reviewed principles of expert elicitation — ensuring the output is a genuine consensus, not a lowest-common-denominator opinion.
Each panel surgeon receives the case with no knowledge of their peers' opinions, preventing anchoring bias that plagues traditional second-opinion models.
Surgeons complete a standardized structured form — diagnosis confirmation, surgical indication, technique recommendation, risk assessment — enabling direct comparison.
When opinions diverge significantly, a structured discussion phase allows panel surgeons to review each other's reasoning, resolving or transparently documenting the disagreement.
Every assigned surgeon completes a COI declaration. Geographic, institutional, and financial conflicts are systematically excluded before panel assignment.
Spine surgery carries life-altering consequences. A single surgeon's recommendation — however expert — is a single data point. Discensia transforms that single point into a statistically meaningful signal.
"The consensus of specialists is the closest thing medicine has to ground truth."
Our consensus methodology is derived from peer-reviewed expert elicitation research, not ad hoc opinion gathering.
Asynchronous review means no scheduling delays. Full consensus reports delivered within 72 hours of complete case submission.
Every Discensia surgeon is fellowship-trained, actively practicing, and has passed our credentialing and conflict-of-interest review.
Discensia was built by a Stanford-trained spine surgeon practicing in Denver. After years of advocating for conservative care, he saw too many patients returning for revision surgeries — procedures that might have been avoided with a second, third, or fourth expert voice from the start.
Panel size is matched to the nature of the recommended surgery. Simpler decisions may need 3 voices. High-stakes or complex procedures warrant 7.
We're onboarding founding surgeons and initial partners. Whether you're a patient, insurer, or fellowship-trained spine surgeon — we want to hear from you.
For patients seeking a surgical consensus opinion on a spine condition.