Reducing Your Anesthesia Subsidy
Is your anesthesia subsidy being increased by your anesthesia management group annually? Have you learned that the subsidy you are paying is significantly higher than what other comparable facilities are paying? Do you simply need to reduce expenditures across the board to support your bottom line? There are countless reasons why hospital or facility administrators may need to reduce their anesthesia subsidy. Here, we will shed light on how anesthesia subsidies are calculated and how you can reduce yours.
How to Calculate an Anesthesia Subsidy
While numerous details must be accounted for in calculating an anesthesia subsidy, the basic equation is quite simple. If there is a deficit between anesthesia revenue and the cost of running your anesthesia department, an anesthesia subsidy is meant to cover this gap. Declining reimbursement rates, inefficient staffing models, last-minute surgery cancellations and inefficient OR utilization all play roles in necessitating anesthesia subsidies. If you believe your anesthesia subsidy is being charged superfluously, it is time to examine your anesthesia budget carefully.
Revenue Cycle Management Matters
One of the simplest ways to reduce your anesthesia subsidy is to ensure that every reimbursement dollar possible is being captured rather than left uncollected. Choosing an anesthesia management company with its own billing team that specializes in anesthesia coding is key since anesthesia billing is different than traditional medical billing. Proper collections and accounts receivables procedures are essential and should be routinely audited by external reviewers. By optimizing your reimbursement potential, an anesthesia subsidy can be significantly reduced.
Optimize Your Anesthesia Staffing Model
Considering that anesthesia provider salaries are the most expensive budget items for any anesthesia department, an inefficient staffing model could be costing your facility hundreds of thousands annually. Carefully review your ratio of anesthesiologists to CRNAs and compare OR utilization to your anesthesia staffing. Ensure your OR director is collaborating well with anesthesia department leaders. Even the simplest scheduling snafus can add up to significant yet avoidable expenditures.
Improve Patient Preparation
Inadequate and inconsistent patient preparation is associated with excessive surgery cancellations, delays and problematic recoveries. Your anesthesia department should be managing a high-functioning patient assessment and preparation unit that accomplishes timely patient preparation in a consistently high-quality fashion. At CCI Anesthesia, we encourage our anesthesia providers to serve on pertinent hospital or facility committees that aim to streamline patient intake and preparation processes. Overcommunicating to patients the importance of following their pre-operative and post-operative instructions can directly impact a facility’s bottom line.
Assess Operating Room Productivity and Utilization
Improving OR turnover is an art and science. Surgeons, nurses, techs and anesthesia providers must all do their part in optimizing every minute of OR productivity. Suppose you have assessed surgery time and turnover time for each of your ORs and have found opportunities for improvement. In that case, your anesthesia providers should be willing to help you turn these opportunities into enhanced revenue. When there is close daily cooperation between surgeons and anesthesia providers, a significant improvement in OR productivity can result.
Choosing the Right Anesthesia Management Group
Your anesthesia management company should be forthcoming and transparent with you about anesthesia department financials. If your current anesthesia management group is reluctant to share their books with you or seems uninterested in finding new ways to save on anesthesia-related costs, it may be time to consider transitioning anesthesia services.
For more information on how to reduce your anesthesia subsidy, contact us today at 800.494.3948.