What Is the Ad Hoc Committee Up to Now?
Refinement of the task force’s initial proposals has depended upon acquiring real world data on surgical and anesthesia procedures and times from a cross-spectrum of anesthesia practices. This has been difficult since most practices do not capture surgical procedure codes in sufficient detail for the ad hoc committee to accurately analyze the various models. The committee has acquired the required data from a few practices with integrated information systems. One important area being investigated is the variability of surgical and anesthesia times within a single surgical procedure. Initial results demonstrate wide variability, raising concerns about how one can fairly assign values in the average time models. The large variability in time would likely also create large variability in impact by practice type. Small workgroups of the committee have continued to refine the descriptions of the component coding model and the separate anesthesia time model as well as pursue methods to expan
