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Anesthesia Management: No Drop in Malpractice Payments When Caps Rise to $500K

Putting in place noneconomic damage caps appears to reduce payouts more than not having caps, but when caps increased to $500,000, the effect on payments was neutralized, new research shows. Specifically, any cap trimmed average payments by 15% ($42,980) compared with no cap, and a $250,000 cap reduced average payments by 20% ($59,331), researchers report […]

Anesthesia Management: Harvey Mackay: 9 ways to maintain motivation

Motivation must come from within. You have to ignite your own passion. Otherwise, how do you explain that in a roomful of people who hear the same message, some will just go back to the office, grateful for the break, while others go on to accomplish great things. I am fascinated with the science of […]

Anesthesia Management: Investing in outpatient surgery centers

Surgery centers can be highly profitable businesses if they attract top physicians, deliver quality care and are efficiently operated. A report last year by Moody’s Investors Service predicted continued strong revenue growth for surgery centers, noting that they “provide care without the high-cost infrastructures associated with hospitals.” In fact, a number of hospitals are getting […]

This is another article not about our specialty but something that can effect our practice. Although preventing infections should be at the top of a hospital’s to-do list, a rapidly approaching penalty will soon give them a financial incentive to do so. A program which started at the beginning of the 2015 fiscal year, hospitals […]

Anesthesia Management: Referred pain location depends on the affected section of the sacroiliac joint

Published in Eur Spine J. 2014 Oct 5 Authors: Kurosawa D et al PURPOSE: Pain referred from the sacroiliac joint (SIJ) may originate in the joint’s posterior ligamentous region. The site of referred pain may depend on which SIJ section is affected. This study aimed to determine the exact origin of pain referred from four […]

Anesthesia Management: Better denials management strategies

Commercial insurers inaccurately process about 20 percent of claims filed by medical practices. It’s an industry standard that has weathered the test of time — though not in a good way. That figure is viewed as an accurate benchmark, even though it comes from a three-year-old edition of the National Health Insurer Report Card, compiled […]

Anesthesia Management: Physician employment and buyout agreements: the basics

The standard employment agreement will define the term of the agreement, the scope of duties and expectations, and license requirements and benefits Employment and buyout agreements are usually referred to as “governance documents” for physician practices, and there are more than just these two. But do you really need these documents? If you are a […]

Anesthesia Management: ‘Waking Up’ During Surgery May Have Long-Term Psychological Harm

Accidental awareness during general anaesthesia happens in roughly one in every 19,000 cases, according to a major new study on this highly feared complication. This incidence of “waking up” during surgery is much lower than previous estimates, which were as high as 1 in 600, the authors say. In accidental awareness during general anaesthesia (AAGA), […]

Anesthesia Management: Crystalloid or Colloid Fluid Therapy?

Pendulum Swings Again Authors: M. C. Kelleher, D. J. Buggy Br J Anaesth. 2014;113(3):335-337. Since the 1980s, evidence has been accumulating that survivors of major surgery generate a higher postoperative cardiac output than non-survivors, and that achieving a supra-normal oxygen delivery to the body’s major organs (DO2, normally greater than 1000 ml O2min) in the […]

Anesthesia Management: Blood Bank Group Offers Guidelines on Which Patients Should Receive Platelet Transfusions

The AABB, formerly the American Association of Blood Banks, recommends that adults with therapy-induced hypoproliferative thrombocytopenia should receive a prophylactic platelet transfusion to lower their bleeding risk, according to new guidelines published in the Annals of Internal Medicine. The recommendation — the only one strongly endorsed by the group — advises that hospitalized adults with […]