With a nationwide shortage of anesthesia providers that is expected to worsen before it improves, hospitals are discovering that their vision of a fully staffed anesthesia department is really a mirage. Large stipends alone will rarely be sufficient to ensure all the anesthesia coverage a hospital desires. Hospitals will need to optimize their use of anesthesia providers, not simply to keep the stipends in check but also to avoid the curtailment of necessary services. Across the country, hospitals and health systems are providing increasingly larger stipends for anesthesia coverage, and by all indications, this trend will continue for the foreseeable future. At the heart of this trend is a shortage of anesthesia providers resulting from:
These market forces have produced a bidding war for anesthesia providers as hospitals struggle to keep ORs and procedure rooms—their main profit centers—open and productive. While the bidding war has driven up salary levels for anesthesia providers, it does nothing to produce more of them, nor does it address critical OR productivity shortfalls. This means that for years to come, anesthesia providers will remain in short supply even as the stipends get larger.
To manage this situation effectively, existing anesthesia providers must be utilized at optimal efficiency. This will require difficult decisions that many hospital leaders have traditionally been reluctant to make.
Edited by: Emily Johnson
Published February 16, 2024
You Might Also Like
