Transition from Private to Academic Anesthesia Provision Changes Process and Patient Centered Outcomes in an Ambulatory Surgery Center

A recurring concern in the discussion of performance of anesthesia practices is that academic practitioners are slower, less efficient, or produce poorer operational outcomes than their private practice counterparts. A simple overnight ‘swap’ of a private anesthesia practice with an academic anesthesia practice took place in an outpatient surgery center where the case volume, case mix, surgeons, and staff remained the same. Operational and quality measures were analyzed for comparison between the practices over the span of two years. All patients who had a procedure at the outpatient surgery center in the year prior to the takeover and the year after were studied. Post-anesthesia care unit times, hospital transfer data, pain scores at discharge, opioids dispensed, and anesthesia control times were compared over two years. Charts were manually abstracted by non-clinical administrative staff who were unaware of the study hypothesis. Procedure data and clinical outcomes were compared between the two years using standard statistical techniques. After exchange to the academic group, the median (mean) pain score at post-anesthesia care unit (PACU) discharge was reduced from 2 (2.0) to 0 (1.7) (Wilcoxon rank sum test p < 0.001), and the odds of having moderate or severe pain was reduced by 32% (95% CI, 25, 39, p < 0.001) after adjusting for surgery type. The year-on-year average recovery room time was reduced by 13.9 min (95% CI, 12.5, 15.4, p < 0.001) after adjusting for surgery type. There was a significant reduction in hospital transfer rate after changing groups (0.45% vs. 0.07%, Pearson chi square test p = 0.005). Hospital transfer rates, dispensed opioids in PACU, pain scores at discharge, and PACU times were all improved after the conversion from a private practice to an academic one, without a compromise in efficiency or throughput.