As the ASC industry continues to grow and expand, the anesthesia staffing crisis persists as a top concern for ASC leaders.
Aaron Kalin, DO, medical director and chair of anesthesiology at Adventist Health and Rideout in Marysville, Calif., recently joined Becker’s to discuss his predictions for the future of the ASC industry and the anesthesia staffing shortage.
Editor’s note: This response has been lightly edited for clarity and length:
Question: What predictions do you have for the ASC industry over the next few years, with specific regard to anesthesia operations?
Dr. Aaron Kalin: I think the vacuum effect is going to remain. I believe you’re going to see ambulatory surgery center volumes continue to grow as the population gets more cataract surgery, more phaco surgery, more ENT surgeries. I think the ambulatory footprint is going to grow, which means you’re going to need more clinical assets, which means you’re going to have to hire more anesthesiologists and certified registered nurse anesthetists.
There’s going to be tremendous pressure to churn out or freshly mint new graduates, to get people into the workforce, to solve the demand problem, which is going to be primarily on the ambulatory side. I see inpatient volumes going down. I see ambulatory surgery volumes going up. I don’t see that trend stopping for a long time. In fact, I see an increase in the velocity of cases going into the outpatient setting. And when we say ambulatory surgery center, that can also be freestanding gastroenterology centers for endoscopy. When you look at two, five, 10 years out, the trend is more outpatient surgery and quicker throughput, which puts a lot of pressure on us to hire more anesthesia assets, but we can’t get them unless we graduate more assets. Now you have more programs opening up. They’re looking at programs that maybe don’t need to be four years. Maybe you can do residency in three years. Maybe nurse anesthetist school doesn’t have to be 36 months. Maybe it can be 28 months. So, I think that they’re looking at how we can manufacture, train, credential or educate people quicker so we can graduate more people that are entering the workforce, particularly in anesthesia, to keep up with the demand, particularly on the outpatient basis.
