This article represents part one of a three-part series.
“The Earth is flat.”
“Give half of the big syringe and all of the little syringe.”
“A large anesthesia group is composed of 70 members.”
We all know that certain things are forever true and will never be altered by the passage of time, right? A scant three years ago, the ASA Committee on Large Group Practice (CLGP) created a definition of “large group practice” that included groups with as few as 70 members. How times have changed! While the definition hasn’t changed, the models of practice have. In 2015, there are anesthesia practices consisting of thousands of members. Moreover, the traditional differentiation of large-group private/community practice from academic practices is no longer as clear-cut as it has been in the past. Many of the same business relationships apply to both academic and community practices; in some cases, community and academic...