Many anesthesia and pain management programs are operating at or beyond capacity. The leaders running them say the biggest obstacles are structural, not clinical.
Practices and clinics packed beyond what support staff can handle, hospital departments and their clinical counterparts operating in silos and a mismatch between how administrators measure success and how clinicians define it are all converging, creating an operational crisis.
These three leaders discussed the current challenges the anesthesia and pain management space is dealing with today at Becker’s 23rd Annual Spine, Orthopedic and Pain Management-Driven ASC + The Future of Spine Conference in Chicago.
Editor’s note: Responses have been lightly edited for clarity and length.
Question: What is the single biggest operational challenge facing anesthesia and pain services right now?
Magdalena Anitescu, MD, PhD. Pain Management Division Chief and Anesthesia and Pain Medicine Professor of University of Chicago Medicine: In academics there are two pillars, which don’t talk to each other. One is the department, one is the hospital. What we try to do is combine them so we can have a little bit better communication and just a little bit better growth together. That is pretty much our challenge right now.
Brendan Coughlin. Section Administrator, Anesthesia and Critical Care Department of University of Chicago Medicine: Access to care. At this point, all of our clinics are stuffed and overstuffed. Every day I get messages from the clinical support that they’re feeling overwhelmed or overworked. We have excellent physicians that have 150% staffing of patients for their clinics, which is excellent. But at the end of the day, we need support staff. And when we’re told, especially in academic medicine by those in the C-suite that we can’t approve certain positions, so on and so forth, that should never be a stopgap for us providing the appropriate care for a patient. We need to be fully staffed, whether it’s from a coordinator to a nurse, to make our practices run smoothly.
Evan Peskin, MD. Corporate Chair of Pain Management of Insight Institute of Neurosurgery & Neuroscience (Flint, Mich.): My issue is that different people sitting at the table have wildly varied metrics and measurables of how they’re looking for success. A clinician’s outcomes are focused on pain reduction, overall functionality improvement, opioid reduction and everything along those lines. Someone who is more focused on operational staffing may ensure that 90% staffing is not superseded, and we’re not having 110% or 120% staff relative to clinical need. That’s the problem. And that’s why, in my opinion, there should be more people with a proficiency in medicine making decisions in healthcare.
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.