Re: Has this message board gone to hell and back? Archived Message
Posted by dd on August 5, 2008, 5:20 pm, in reply to "Has this message board gone to hell and back?"
20 years as an RN qualifies your Mother to pontificate on anesthesia issues? Hardly. The issue is who controls the practice of anesthesia in this country and consequently the revenue generated from that control. The issue is between the American Association of Nurse Anesthetists (AANA) and the American Society of Anesthesiologists (ASA) and has been raging in one form or another between Nurse Anesthetists and Anesthesiologists for close to a century. AAs are simply the latest ploy used by the ASA in an effort to create in large numbers a provider that is totally dependent on, and clinically completely useless without, an Anesthesiologist. Thereby guaranteeing the anesthesiologist a billing opportunity every time an AA touches a patient. In the past 30 years or so, the ASA has managed to turn out so few AAs that there are currently less than 1000 doctors assistants practicing in limited areas of the country. Conversely, there are 39000 Certified Registered Nurse Anesthetists (CRNAs) practicing in ALL practice settings nationwide with and without anesthesiologists. There are 108 Nurse Anesthesia training programs in the country and one out of every four hospitals in the US is a training facility for student Nurse Anesthetists. You need to devote WAY more study time to this issue before you make further erroneous public statements on the politics of anesthesia delivery.
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