The days of judging an anesthesiologist's quality based on whether they'd be a good golfing partner are over.
North American Partners in Anesthesia Vice President Thomas Dixon explored the role of anesthesia in the ASC space at Becker's ASC 25th Annual Meeting: The Business and Operations of ASCs, Oct. 18 in Chicago.
Here are three takeaways:
1. Anesthesia plays an important role when adding a new service to a center — especially when adding total joint replacements, Mr. Dixon said
He said the strategy to add joints is typically centered on three things: patient selection, payer roles and whether a center has the ability to keep patients overnight.
"I'm here to tell you one big key to doing outpatient joints in the ASC setting is the right kind of anesthesia," Mr. Dixon said. "It's really hard to get a patient out within 24 hours if they wake up after their joint surgery and are bent over the toilet throwing up. Anesthesia care protocols and the way we deliver care has a big impact on postsurgical nausea and vomiting, but also patient ambulation after surgery, which has a huge impact on whether or not you can get those patients out the door."
2. In Mr. Dixon's opinion, an ASC's anesthesia group should be one of the center's biggest advocates. In meetings, anesthesia groups should come prepared with analytics that show their value and areas for improvement.
"If your anesthesia group doesn't bring data to your partner meetings or doesn't walk into your administrator's office with data about quality metrics and other efficiency metrics — if these kind of reports aren't being put in front of your surgeon partners and your administration team on a regular basis — you have the wrong kind of anesthesia group, or your expectations for your group are too low."
3. The right anesthesia group should also help an ASC stand out from its competition.
"How do you get your ASC to stand out in a competitive and crowded field? One way is to get anesthesia to help," Mr. Dixon said. "The old paradigm is an anesthesiologist puts a patient to sleep and they can be jerks. … Those days are over. It's time to look for an anesthesia group that can look at you that'll say, 'I'm going to help you improve service to your patients and separate you in the marketplace.'"