By Jason Greenberg, MD, Chief Client Officer, Angie Knight, President, Anesthesia, and Steve Avery, Chief Growth Officer
We wanted to take a moment to share an update from our recent attendance at the ASA Advance 2025 business meeting in Atlanta, which brought together over 1,000 attendees to discuss the most pressing issues in the anesthesia field. Here’s a quick recap of the key takeaways from the event that directly impact the future of anesthesia practice:
Commercial Payer Challenges
A significant portion of the discussions focused on the ongoing challenges with commercial payers, which continue to create headwinds for anesthesia practices. Sessions highlighted issues such as:
- Managed care contracting within the NSA (No Surprises Act) framework
- Erosion of payment rates from commercial payers
- Increasingly poor payer behavior
The ASA leadership underscored their continued advocacy efforts to address these challenges and improve the payer landscape.
CMS (Medicare) Challenges
The continued erosion of Medicare sequestration continues to be a major concern, with anesthesia practices feeling the impact more acutely due to the high volume of CMS patients and the comparatively lower reimbursement rates. What was once a “33% problem” has now worsened into a “25% problem.” Advocacy efforts are ongoing as the ASA collaborates with other national specialty societies to mitigate these annual cuts.
Practice Disruption
The intersection of declining reimbursement rates and worsening labor shortages is creating record subsidies and significant practice model disruptions. Several panels delved into the specifics of practice disruption as well as the key drivers behind them.
Keynote Highlights
The conference also featured two compelling keynote speakers:
- Lawton Burns explored the impact of vertical and horizontal integration in the healthcare system, offering insights into how these trends affect anesthesia practices.
- Will Flannery (AKA Dr. Glaukomflecken) provided a lighthearted yet thought-provoking session on the importance of humor and humility in medicine, reminding us all of the human side of healthcare.
As always, the ASA Advance provided a valuable platform for learning, networking, and deepening our commitment to supporting anesthesia practices as they navigate an increasingly complex landscape.
If you have any questions or would like to discuss how these topics might affect your practice specifically, please don’t hesitate to reach out. We’re here to help you stay ahead of the curve.
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