This post was written by: Aman Mahajan, MD Chair, Department of Anesthesiology, University of California, Los Angeles, CA Jody Locke, CPC Vice President of Anesthesia and Pain Management Services, ABC Background It is often suggested that an anesthesiology department should have more complete and readily accessible data about the clinical care provided in the operating rooms and the delivery suite than any other department of the facility; but how often is this actually the case? Anesthesia providers review and document enormous amounts of clinical detail and critical events for every patient they see, but little of this information is actually captured in a way that allows for its logical indexing and retrieval. Most anesthesia groups and their billing services have been so focused on the data necessary to calculate a charge and generate a claim that they have virtually ignored what is potentially the most valuable of information of all. The...