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Anesthesia providers are credentialed to our staff, they are not employed by the facility and/or contracted by the facility. Anesthesia services are billed by the independent provider. The biggest pro of this relationship is physician satisfaction with choice of anesthesia providers to provide services for their cases. Another pro includes the fact that the scheduling of anesthesia is performed at the physician's office. Typically, the surgeon uses the same provider week after week, therefore, we are still able to create the structure and processes needed at the facility.
Just as there are pros to this relationship there are cons as well. Some cons include that many different providers from different groups are in our facility daily. This relationship can cause delays in surgery related to the changes throughout the day. Unfortunately, this relationship can also lend itself to political issues with hand-off communication and staying at the facility to wait for the appropriate discharge status of the patient by one provider when another provider from a different group is still at the facility. Unfortunately, this also leads to many different anesthesia providers being credentialed at the facility. The majority of the time the number of anesthesia credentialed providers is more than quadruple the number of surgeons credentialed to the facility.
Overall, this is not a one-size-fits-all arrangement. Facility leaders can work with many different types of arrangements and what works best at one facility might not work best at another facility.
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