"Anesthesiology Acquisition Rate Still at Fevered Pace," Richard Cooper quoted in Anesthesiology News

July 1, 2015

News

For W. Scott Brosche, MD, a senior partner at Fredericksburg Anesthesia Associates Inc., in Virginia, passage of the Affordable Care Act in 2010 was a cause for concern. How would the small, 16-physician practice, holding contracts with just two hospitals and one ambulatory surgery center, deal with the oncoming raft of legislated health care reforms, such as bundled payments, pay-for-performance, value-based purchasing and accountable care organizations? In addition to this uncertainty, “another hospital was moving into our area with a competing anesthesia group owned by a national corporation,” Dr. Brosche said. “So we began to think about our options.”

After considerable research and no small amount of soul searching, Dr. Brosche and his partners sold their practice last year to the national medical group MEDNAX Services Inc., and became part of the company’s American Anesthesiology division. “We had seen that small practices such as ours were increasingly being ousted from hospitals even though they had provided good care for many years,” Dr. Brosche said. “There was just no security.”

Click here to read the full article.

Over the past 24 months, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Office for Civil Rights has brought notable enforcement efforts against several non-profit covered entities and business associates, resulting in instances of six and seven-figure penalties against providers across the county for incidents involving breaches of protected health information.

A new amendment to New York state law, which would have required all healthcare providers to obtain separate consents from patients for treatment and payment is on hold until further guidance is released, according to the New York Department of Health.

On November 1, 2024, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services issued the Medicare Physician Fee Schedule 2025 final rule, which establishes new advanced primary care management billing codes that will expand opportunities for physician practices, federally qualified health centers, rural health clinics and other health care providers to get paid for services provided by clinical staff under the direction of a physician, nurse practitioner or physician assistant beginning January 1, 2025.

"Anesthesiology Acquisition Rate Still at Fevered Pace," Richard Cooper quoted in Anesthesiology News

Related Services

You may also be interested in