Updated guide to billing for regional anesthesia (United States).

A regional anesthesia service offers significant advantages for patients and healthcare providers. Improved perioperative pain control directly benefits the patient while facilitating the work of the anesthesiologist and the surgeon. In recent years, ultrasound (US) guidance has undoubtedly played a prominent role in the evolution of pain control as evidenced by the growing number of clinical investigations focused on US-guided regional anesthesia techniques. The benefits of peripheral nerve blocks (PNBs), including continuous PNBs (CPNBs), are well documented and include reduction in time to achieve discharge criteria,1,2 lower opioid requirement in the postanesthesia care unit,3 decreased postoperative nausea and vomiting,4 and rapid rehabilitation.5 A dedicated regional anesthesia service can also have financial benefits for ambulatory surgical centers and hospitals. Although there are many published articles exploring the techniques and practice of regional anesthesia and US-guided PNB specifically, the same cannot be said about billing for regional anesthesia. In fact, a search of PubMed yields only 2 published articles on this subject in the peer-reviewed literature.6,7 The purpose of this article is to provide the most current information about billing for