Anesthesiology prices jump significantly after medical facilities contract with corporate physician management companies – especially those backed by private equity firms – and threaten to hike patient costs, according to new research by Weill Cornell Medicine and Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health investigators.
The paper, published Feb. 28 in JAMA Internal Medicine, highlights the growing trend of hospital outpatient departments and ambulatory surgery centers outsourcing anesthesiology management to profit-driven companies – “physician management companies (PMCs)” – that employ anesthesiologists, said senior author Dr. Lawrence Casalino, the Livingston Farrand Professor of Public Health in the Department of Population Health Sciences at Weill Cornell Medicine. Read more.
