Outpatient Anesthesia

Outpatient anesthesia is the coming thing. Our lecture today given by Dr. Gold at the Keck School of Medicine program of Nurse anesthesia. It was concerned with Surgical Center and Office based anesthesia based practice.

It is estimated that currently 60 to 70 % of all surgical procedures in the United States are done on an outpatient basis (Ackerman, 2002). This is a dramatic change in the last 20 years or so. The main driving forces for this move to ambulatory surgery has been financial incentives. Additional benefits that have come from the outpatient surgical movement is earlier ambulatory of patients, decreased exposure to nosocomial infections and patient convenience.

Anya Bibergal SRNA

Like it or not, having surgery as an outpatient is here to stay. It could easily be predicted that in the next two decades the numbers of hospital based surgeries will decrease and sicker patients will be treated as outpatients in Surgery Centers. These Centers will have overnight stay capability and hospital access for patients that need higher levels of care. Its impossible to stop the move to more decentralized care and this includes surgical as well as medical treatments. Physicians and Nurse anesthetists will be providing this care, working together to ensure patient safety.

The entire lecture and notes can be located for your perusal in the archives.

Happy students after receiving their test scores from the Anatomy exam!