Surgery centers cannot conjure more anesthesia providers, and many cannot keep absorbing the subsidies that keep those providers in the building. A Florida anesthesia company is betting the next-best lever is already sitting in ASCs’ scheduling data.
MAS Anesthesia Consultants pulls case data from a center’s HST Pathways system and recommends the most cost-efficient, compliant anesthesia staffing model for each day, up to four weeks out, one of its leaders told Becker’s.
The company reports about a 19% month-to-month reduction in staffing costs once both staffing mix and cancellation fees are factored in, said Brian Cohen, MD, founding partner of Miami Anesthesia Services and MAS Anesthesia Consultants.
“The cheapest anesthesiologist is the one you never needed to schedule in the first place,” Dr. Cohen said.
How it works
Ping launched in mid-2026 as the digital arm of a holding company that also includes Miami Anesthesia Services, which provides anesthesia at 22 ASCs and handles about 60,000 cases a year, and MAS Anesthesia Consultants, the team that manages those operations. Dr. Cohen said the tool digitizes 11 years of lessons from running anesthesia across those centers and the management companies and surgeon partnerships behind them.
Ping reads a center’s own HST Pathways data through HST’s DataStream, so facilities do not need additional plug-ins or integrations.
Each day, site administrators and anesthesia leaders see three layers of insight for the coming four weeks:
- Baseline staffing: The most cost-efficient, compliant model for the day’s rooms and cases, whether the center uses anesthesiologists, CRNAs or a mix.
- Additional optimization: Opportunities flagged by rules MAS Anesthesia Consultants built and used to manage their own centers.
- Human backup: At any point, administrators or the anesthesia team can “ping” MAS’ panel of anesthesia experts for a one-on-one consultation.
Dr. Cohen described the tool as “more of a diagnostic assistant, not really a prescriber.” Every decision still sits with site leadership and its anesthesia partners.
Before Ping, MAS ran 22 WhatsApp group chats — one per center — in which schedulers, administrators and anesthesia leads traded staffing forecasts starting three weeks out and revised them as surgery dates approached. The tool now handles that back-and-forth in a click.
“It’s actually been fun to watch those groups disappear,” Dr. Cohen said.
Where the savings come from
Dr. Cohen pointed to two levers that produce savings: who gets staffed each day and how often scheduled providers get canceled. Cancellation fees make up about 5% of total subsidy costs, he said, and better predictability is what eliminates them.
At the base level, Ping lays out the options for a given day. A center running two ORs might staff one anesthesiologist supervising two CRNAs, or one anesthesiologist per room. The tool compares the cost of each model against the projected revenue of that day’s scheduled cases, all drawn from the center’s HST data.
The second layer factors in case complexity and state compliance rules. If one room is running low-complexity cataract cases, for example, Ping may flag a third option: an anesthesiologist in one room and a CRNA in the other, billed under the QZ modifier. The tool walks the administrator through the compliance, legality and cost of that choice.
At one center, that opportunity surfaced on 78 days in a year and saved $840 each day — about $65,000 in annual anesthesia subsidy, Dr. Cohen said. The center did not change the number of rooms it ran. The anesthesia group, meanwhile, needed fewer providers on those days, which Dr. Cohen noted matters when there are not many to spare.
Ping is priced by the number of ORs at a site. At one center, a single month of savings covered the tool’s cost for the year, Dr. Cohen said.
A game of hot potato
Dr. Cohen framed the tool as part of a broader case: ASCs, anesthesia groups and surgeon partners have to solve the subsidy problem together, because anesthesia companies can no longer absorb the gap and payers have stepped away from it. He likened the subsidy to a game of hot potato in which the surgery center is left holding it.
“The payers in the middle of this game sort of snuck out of the room,” he said.
He said swapping vendors is not a viable solution, either.
“I don’t think the answer to anesthesia problems right now is constant turnover of groups,” Dr. Cohen said. “The answer is not finding 10 new anesthesiologists in a rural setting in which there’s only 3,000 people. It’s how do we use the resources that we have in a better way?”
That view shapes how Ping works. Each staffing action starts as a request from the site administrator, which the anesthesia team accepts or answers with an alternative — not the other way around.
“As an anesthesia company, we will never tell a surgeon partnership or a site administrator, ‘This is what you need, this is what you’re getting,'” Dr. Cohen said. “We essentially present them with options and education.”
That education extends to case economics. His team shows administrators, for instance, that 10 Medicare carpal tunnel cases still will not cover the cost of a CRNA, while a few commercial rotator cuff repairs will.
He sees the tool as one answer to a structural problem, not a stopgap.
“It has to end up as partnerships,” Dr. Cohen said. “The margins don’t allow us to do anything other than that.”
At the Becker’s 32nd Annual Meeting: The Business and Operations of ASCs, taking place October 29-31 in Chicago, ASC leaders, surgeons and healthcare executives will explore strategies to drive growth, enhance operational performance, navigate reimbursement challenges and prepare for the future of ambulatory surgery. Apply for complimentary registration now.
