Cost Effectiveness of Physician Anesthesia

Introduction The question of whether anesthesiologists are cost-effective providers of anesthesia services remains an open question in the minds of some of our medical colleagues, the allied health community, the political and regulatory class, and the public. There have been recent publications that claim that there is no difference in outcomes between anesthetics delivered by anesthesiologists versus those delivered by nurse anesthetists and since nurses are paid less than physicians that anesthesiologists are not cost-effective [1-3]. In a medical environment with rapidly narrowing margins, replacing physicians with nurses could be an attractive option to some medical facilities.