Incorporation of acute pain modalities within anesthesia practices has greatly expanded over the years, and this has brought positive changes in patient care and physician payment. However, where new techniques become "standard of care," adjustments in payment often follow.As the preeminent provider of outsourced anesthesia billing and management s...

Summary Anesthesia practices increasingly face new and more robust strategies by some health insurers to suppress payments.In a follow-up to last week's alert, we intend to focus once more on ways in which anesthesia providers are encountering new challenges to getting paid. We have noted with increasing concern tactics being employed by some of h...

The value of healthcare acquisitions in the U.S. in the first seven months of 2015 is now more than $356 billion.  The final figure for all of 2014 was $326.1 billion, according to the Wall Street Journal. Within anesthesiology alone, 14 different entities acquired 27 anesthesia practices in 2014 at an estimated total cost of nearly $1 billion.  Almost as many acquisitions were completed in the first quarter of this year alone.  (Anesthesiology Acquisition Rate Still at Fevered Pace, Anesthesiology News, July 2015).Merger and acquisition (M&A) activity in health care has spread far beyond the consolidation of groups and hospitals and health systems.  We are now in a phase where health insurance companies are trying to grow by buying others.  The potential for a landscape dominated by just a handful of insurance behemoths is raising concerns across the industry.Anthem, Inc. announced on July 24th that it had entered into a definitive...