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 ...
Effective anesthesiology group governance is no longer a luxury but instead an important survival skill. Why?
The external environment is threatening— changes in reimbursement, threats from competitors, hospital consolidation—all add up to the need to make decisions, change and adapt.
The internal dynamics of many groups are challenging—getting “the entire herd roughly moving west,” dealing with disruptive physicians, developing an agreed upon group strategy—all require a well organized governance system.
Whether your group’s Board includes all the shareholder physicians, or you have chosen a subset of the shareholders to serve as the Board, there are a number of steps that you can take to strengthen your Board’s performance. Here are several of the most important steps that an anesthesiology group Board can take.
Improve Board Meetings
We begin with Board meetings. Why Board meetings?
No matter your group’s size, meetings are a tool that all groups use in their governance processes.... 
Depending on one’s standpoint and experience, the peer review process can bring about mixed feelings in healthcare providers. Opinions about the effectiveness of the process, those who sit on the panel and the outcome are often debated. However, what is often less debated until long after the process has taken place is whether the information reviewed during the peer review process is subject to discovery in other settings.
Generally, the peer review process is a retrospective review of an event or series of events conducted in an effort to improve quality of care. In order to encourage candid review, many states have enacted laws to limit the discoverability of the proceedings, the records reviewed and the records created during the peer review process. In other words, in a civil proceeding, the contents of the peer review meetings and the records discussed are not discoverable and are not subject to a subpoena... 
The past several years have, once again, brought major changes to the anesthesia community and have greatly impacted private practice anesthesia. Whereas the early nineties were a time of “anesthesia surplus” when anesthesiologists struggled to find opportunities paying as little as $100,000, those days were followed by a shortage of anesthesia providers. Supply and demand economics dictated that during the days of anesthesia staffing shortage, prices and compensation for anesthesia staff increased to the highest levels in history. Now, a new day is on the horizon where hospitals have many choices for anesthesia coverage. Smaller, private practice anesthesia groups struggle to sustain financial viability. Many groups are exploring mergers to achieve economies of scale and hoped-for negotiation leverage with private payers. Larger and mega-groups continue to liquidate their value and sell to publicly traded companies such as EmCare or MedNax. A growing number of large anesthesia staffing companies continue to enter... Depending on one’s standpoint and experience, the peer review process can bring about mixed feelings in healthcare providers. Opinions about the effectiveness of the process, those who sit on the panel and the outcome are often debated. However, what is often less debated until long after the process has taken place is whether the information reviewed during the peer review process is subject to discovery in other settings.
Generally, the peer review process is a retrospective review of an event or series of events conducted in an effort to improve quality of care. In order to encourage candid review, many states have enacted laws to limit the discoverability of the proceedings, the records reviewed and the records created during the peer review process. In other words, in a civil proceeding, the contents of the peer review meetings and the records discussed are not discoverable and are not subject to a subpoena...