Thirty years ago, the idea of a society for ambulatory anesthesia was considered novel, as new anesthetic agents on the horizon promised faster recovery and fewer side effects after outpatient surgery. Fast forward to today, and the focus is now on patient outcomes and cost. With the development of the SAMBA Clinical Outcomes Registry (SCOR), SAMBA has positioned itself to allow clinical practices to evaluate their performance and patient outcomes. It seems that what the new frontier was then has become the expectation today from both our patients and payers.
Over the years, the mainstay of SAMBA’s mission has always been education. The society has accomplished this predominantly through holding several CME meetings each year, including our annual meeting in the spring and our mid year meeting held the Friday immediately preceding the ASA annual meeting. Several years ago, we elected to also offer an annual meeting solely focused on...
