Adam Spiegel, CEO of Irving, Texas-based anesthesia management group NorthStar Anesthesia, joined Becker's to discuss the benefits ASCs offer clinicians, particularly anesthesia specialists.
Editor's note: Response has been edited lightly for length and clarity.
Question: What benefits do ASCs offer clinicians?
Adam Spiegel: At a high level, it really is a work-life balance thing. For nurse anesthetists and anesthesiologists, it's about more predictable hours. It's changed a little bit since COVID, because ASCs are running longer and sometimes they're running on weekends, but you don't run into add-on cases and trauma. That sort of kicks things out, and you don't have on-call, which is the biggest thing. So especially for people who are looking for a little bit more of the classic nine to five job, that's what an ASC can offer, and it's pretty predictable.
From a compensation perspective, there's much less of a delta between the hospital-based work and ASCs than there has been historically. So I think a lot of clinicians like to work in ASCs just because of that. There's a lot more predictability. As for nurse anesthetists, ASCs tend to be a place where you can operate a little bit more top of license.
ASCs are much more cost-conscious, in a way, because they tend to be backed by physician ownership. So the physicians are going to care a lot more about keeping costs as low as possible, and a lot of times that means more care models. And CRNAs are operating closer to the top of license — it's not just CRNAs, it's RNs, and everybody else is able to operate more top of license, too.
Patient acuity is a bit lower. And again, it just makes for a less stressful environment for anesthesia providers as well. I think that that acuity piece is why it tends to be more of a lifestyle choice for people.
There's always going to be lifestyle trade-offs, if everything was great at ASCs, nobody would work in a hospital. You're definitely going to see that pay is always going to be a little bit more for people who have to take on-call shifts and have to work longer hours, or take 24-hour shifts and those kinds of things. But that delta is being reduced.