Anesthesia benchmark review
A fixed-fee review that puts a market rate next to your current anesthesia subsidy, scoped to the renewal date, before a full service-line assessment and before anyone drafts an RFP.
Most stipend arguments start from the number the group sent and the number the hospital budgeted. Neither is a benchmark. A benchmark review builds the third number: what comparable facilities pay for coverage like yours, set against the schedule you actually ran.
01
What it answers
Whether the current subsidy is in line with the market for the sites, the care-team mix, and the call you require — and whether the group already in the rooms can close the gap.
What you need
Sites, rooms, and on-call coverage the schedule actually requires.
What you pay for unused
Coverage on the contract that the week does not use.
What never arrived
A billing gap wearing a subsidy’s clothes.
Whether they can close it
The outcome we look for first. A search is later.
| Metric Dimension | What AOC Measures | Why It Matters to Leadership |
|---|---|---|
| 01 · Subsidy Per Case | Net hospital stipend divided by verified surgical and procedure volume | Normalizes hospital support against clinical throughput rather than block entitlement |
| 02 · Cost Per Site | Total clinician expense (MD, CRNA, CAA, locums) per staffed OR/NORA room | Exposes whether subsidy growth is wage-driven or caused by keeping low-volume rooms open |
| 03 · Yield Per Unit | Realized fee collections per commercial and governmental base + time unit | Identifies RCM underperformance and billing leakage disguised as stipend requests |
| 04 · Staffed vs In-Room | Contracted coverage hours compared to wheels-in/wheels-out surgical time | Reveals idle room hours and unutilized call coverage that can be restructured |
It does not replace a full service line assessment. A benchmark is the document you can have in hand for a renewal measured in weeks. The assessment is the longer piece of work, when the renewal calendar allows it or when the benchmark shows the problem is not a single number.
02
What we need to start
No patient-identified information. If the question turns out to be collections rather than the stipend, the next step is revenue cycle support, not a higher subsidy and not a new group.
03
How the four stages show up here
- 01 Baseline
- 02 Benchmark
- 03 Alternatives
- 04 On the table
Baseline
Spend, coverage, and collections reconciled to the surgical schedule as it ran, not as it was contracted.
Benchmark
Your figures against market rate for comparable facilities: subsidy per case, cost per anesthetizing site, collections per unit. This is fair market value for the coverage, not a national salary table applied to one hospital.
Alternatives
What actually moves the number — coverage redesign, staffing ratio, charge capture, contract terms — and what each is worth. Keeping the incumbent group is modelled as the default, not as a failure mode.
On the table
The workings, not just the conclusion, in a form the group’s advisors can challenge. If a search is genuinely required after that, RFP support starts from this model. We do not place clinicians, and we do not treat an RFP as the first response to a stipend request.
Fee and time
Fixed, and short enough for a renewal
Fixed fee, agreed before we start. Not a share of any savings. A benchmark review is the engagement we can turn around in time for a renewal that is already on the calendar. Tell us that date at the outset. If it will not support even the short review, we will say so rather than start work that lands after the decision.
Who it is for
The people in the renewal
A hospital CFO, COO, or perioperative leader heading into a renewal, and the anesthesia group that wants the hospital looking at the same model. Figures elsewhere on this site marked as modelled are illustrations of what the analysis is built to surface. They are not a promise about your subsidy, and they are not results for a named client.
Put a number next to the one you have.
Tell us the renewal date and what the current group is asking.