Last week we discussed the growing trend toward including performance measures in contracts between hospitals and anesthesia groups.  We identified clinical quality, efficiency and patient satisfaction measures developed by the Surgical Care Improvement Project (SCIP), the Medicare Physician Quality Reporting System (PQRS), the American Society of Anesthesiologists (ASA), the Anesthesia Quality Institute (AQI), Press-Ganey and the Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems (HCAHPS).  All of these measures can be the basis of hospital or ambulatory surgery center contracts for performance-based payment.Many contracts set forth the quality, efficiency and customer satisfaction activities that are part of the anesthesia group’s quid pro quo for their hospital compensation package without explicitly linking performance rates to payment.  Increasingly, though, the anesthesiologists must meet or exceed agreed-upon benchmarks to earn their payment.Choosing BenchmarksThe benchmarks can be external or internal.  External benchmarks allow for comparison to similar institutions or providers – or to national or...

Health information technology has become the colossus of high quality, high- efficiency medical practice. Anesthesia Business Consultants continues to expand our resources in the area of HIT – as do all of you. With the lead article in this issue of the Communiqué, we introduce to you a major new resource: Bryan Sullivan, Director, EMR and Clinical Integration. Bryan’s article on cloud computing explains an important direction in which HIT is moving.Anesthesiology is on its way to becoming a complete perioperative discipline – as it must, in an environment that will be dominated by integrated, accountable healthcare delivery systems. Richard P. Dutton, MD, MBA, Executive Director of the Anesthesia Quality Institute, describes the role of the AQI in pre- and post-anesthesia assessment in his latest article. In the write-up of his interview with Parish Management Consultants’ Al Patin, “Anesthesia Leadership in the Preoperative Clinic,” ABC Vice President of Client Services Bart...

Written by: Neda Mirafzali, Esq Kathryn Hickner-Cruz, EsqThe Health Law Partners, P.C., Southfield, MISince the passage of the Affordable Care Act1 and the establishment of the Medicare Shared Savings Program (the “Shared Savings Program”), ACOs have become the new hot topic.Section 3022 of the Affordable Care Act provides that Medicare shall establish the Shared Savings Program and that healthcare providers and suppliers will participate in the Shared Savings Program through ACOs. According to CMS, “ACOs create incentives for healthcare providers to work together to treat an individual patient across care settings – including doctor’s offices, hospitals, and long-term care facilities. The Shared Savings Program will reward ACOs that lower growth in healthcare costs while meeting performance standards on quality of care and putting patients first.”2 If an ACO saves money by providing patients with efficient care, then the ACOs can share in a percentage of the savings with Medicare. However, should an ACO fail...