Summary This article is intended to inform the reader on the relevance of reporting ASA Physical Status modifiers, in relation to billing. In medicine, innovations are often developed for one purpose, but later become relevant to other applications. The same is true for ASA physical status. This clinical tool for classifying a patient's preoperati...

SummaryThe growing senior population and the number of patients covered by Medicaid and other public payors is creating an inexorable challenge to anesthesia practice budgets. The long-term implications of the impact of low public payment rates is only going to create more problems in the negotiation of hospital subsidies. It is also unclear how th...

Summary In an era of increasingly challenging negotiations between anesthesia practices and hospital administrators over subsidy requirements, it is becoming more difficult to justify additional financial support. Two issues that keep coming to the fore are operating room utilization and provider productivity. This study of shoulder cases puts the...

Summary: The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services uses a risk adjustment model based on a set of hierarchical condition categories for Medicare Advantage beneficiaries to make appropriate and accurate payments for enrollees with differences in expected costs. We encourage anesthesia practitioners to be aware of these categories, whi...

According to Socrates, “Education is the kindling of a flame, not the filling of a vessel.” A thirst for knowledge by one who is new to the field can be just as important to an employer as an employee with years of experience—even more so if the experienced employee believes they know all there is to know. This is especially true about anesthesia billing—just when you think you have the rules down pat, something changes. Staying on top of your game requires constant learning, and the vessel will never be full. Knowledge is power and, literally, at our fingertips. Much of what one seeks to find can be accessed through search engines. Now it seems the hardest part of learning is an understanding of how to whittle down the vast amounts of data into just the information one needs. Qualifying circumstances, including field avoidance and special positioning, are unique to anesthesia...