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Almost Left Behind - Subscribe to Outpatient Surgery Magazine - April 2018

Outpatient Surgery Magazine, providing current information on Surgical Services, Surgical Facility Administration, Outpatient Surgery News and Trends, OR Excellence and more.

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2 6 • O U T PA T I E N T S U R G E R Y M A G A Z I N E • A P R I L 2 0 1 8 Cataract Surgeons Giving Anesthesia? Insurer say anesthetists aren't needed for most cataract cases. Anesthesia Alert JoEllen McBride, PhD | Associate Editor A major health insur- er wants to deny coverage of anes- thesiology services during cataract sur- gery, saying the surgeon can han- dle sedation and emulsification on his own. Think your eye docs would mind much if they had to adminis- ter IV sedatives and look up from the microscope during the case to monitor vital signs? Of course they would (as would your patients!), but they might have to if Anthem delivers on its promise to eliminate coverage for an anesthesiologist or a nurse anesthetist during what it calls "routine" cataract surgeries. "You want your ophthalmologist focusing only on the surgery at hand and not the patient's anesthesia issues," says Steven Gayer, MD, MBA, chief of surgery and anesthesia at Bascom Palmer Eye Institute in Miami, Fla. "I would hate to be the surgeon who has a case of a vocal local: trying to talk a patient down with no one in the room to help." In a clinical guideline (osmag.net/fR2uCB) released in February, Anthem states that ophthalmologists can administer and monitor seda- tion without jeopardizing patient safety. The guideline also says that monitored anesthesia care is medically necessary only under certain circumstances: if the patient is younger than 18 years old, or is unable • SURGERY AND SEDATION Anthem says it's safe for a cataract surgeon to monitor how well the patient is doing under anesthesia while he's looking through an operating microscope. Pamela Bevelhymer, RN, BSN, CNOR

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