Likely, you’ve read about my first job after residency – a solo private practice in Victoria, Texas. When Susan and I moved there in 1989, Victoria was a city of around 50,000 citizens. About eight other physician anesthesiologists shared call with me, and we covered a varied group of private practice surgeons, working at three hospitals and one independent outpatient surgery center. Twenty-five years ago, even that outpatient surgery center had a physician anesthesiologist as its medical director. I’ll come back to that.
As mentioned above, the physician anesthesiologists provided care for the patients of many different surgeons. After I had been there a while, my practice took on a comfortable routine. On Mondays, I provided anesthesia for the patients of a general surgeon. Before completing his schedule, we might have worked at all four of the facilities mentioned above. Tuesdays saw me providing anesthesia for the cardiac surgeons. I...