The blog post notes that for both private anesthesiology practices and commercial cases the missed revenue from not recording the time spent preparing the patient before anesthesia is induced could be large. An informal poll of a number of academic anesthesiology departments revealed that the main reason anesthesiologists did not start the clock at the point of anesthesia start time was that it was inconvenient to log into the Anesthesia Information Management System and document the start time in the preoperative holding area.
According to the blog post, anesthesia time starts with an intervention performed after preoperative assessment completion, and a new system can help make it easier for anesthesiologists to record the correct start time. The AlertWatch system can signal providers to check whether anesthesia time has in fact begun before the provider and patient are in the room. Such technologies can be used to prevent over- and underbilling.
More articles on anesthesia:
Top 10 causes of anesthesia-related sentinel events
ASA names Dr. John Abenstein president
Anesthesia drug shortages are a reality: 5 options for ASCs
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