Kathryn Hickner, Esq. Ulmer & Berne LLP, Cleveland, OH No one loves drafting, reading or negotiating HIPAA Business Associate Agreements (BAAs). Yet many of us need to do so, and some of us do so daily.They are often boring, dense and technical, but BAAs are important from both a legal and a business perspective, and they deserve our attention....

Summary To improve efficiency in the OR, reduce your hours of over-utilized OR time, increase first-case on-time starts, use an OR manager with a solid grounding in the scientific principles of OR efficiency to drive improvement with electronic notifications, and search the scientific literature to find examples of what works. We summarize these an...

Very few private anesthesia practices provide services in their hospitals' intensive care units (ICUs). The lack of enthusiasm for staffing the ICU relates directly to a perception that ICU coverage is not as profitable as operating room (OR) coverage. The entire Anesthesia Business Consultants client database only yields a few examples of private ...

Summary A direct dialogue between the anesthesiologist and patient is best in obtaining informed consent for anesthesia, according to attorney Judith Jurin Semo, JD, who spoke at ANESTHESIOLOGY® 2017. We present a summary of selected takeaways from Ms. Semo's presentation. Faced with tight time constraints and pressure to maximize operating room ef...

Vicki Myckowiak, Esq. Principal, Myckowiak Associates, PC, Detroit, MIAnesthesia groups currently find themselves in the uncomfortable position of being a target of the Office of Inspector General (OIG) of the Department of Health and Human Services, the largest inspector general's office in the federal government, with approximately 1,600 people d...