Anesthesia in the current health care environment faces challenges to continue technological improvements, lower costs and improve outcomes. Anesthesia consumes large amounts of supplies and services that represent 3-5 percent of the total health care costs in the U.S.1 Within a single case, profit generation by anesthesia providers is capped by factors that include the billable time, procedural coding, invasive monitor placement and surgical time constraints such as case length. In order to improve the bottom line, anesthesia providers must enact cost-saving measures in the peri-operative period. Thus, we propose the MESI Project: The Monetary and Environmental Savings Initiative. As part of our initiative, we focus on equipment (both disposable and reusable), medication usage, anesthetic type based on surgeon preference and patient physiology, and the ability to utilize O.R.s and staff efficiently.
In our organization, we analyzed prices for medications and equipment recently purchased for use during various hypothetical...
