Anesthesia Billing & Management

Last week, the Stanford Anesthesia Informatics and Media Lab (AIM) released StanMed, their new iPad application that was designed as an educational tool in the critical care student clerkship at the School of Medicine. This is how the app is described at the iTunes preview page:

StanMed is an iPad app designed to be used by Stanford medical students, residents, fellows and faculty. We intend StanMed to be used in the classroom and at the bedside. StanMed will provide clinically useful educational modules, tutorials, videos, podcasts and cognitive aids to help facilitate learning at the point of care.

While the application is free, at the moment it’s only available to Stanford University affiliates with valid SUNet IDs. However, exceptions can be made if you are an educator or member of the press. If you’re interested in learning more about the app, you can email them with your request to access the application at help@stanfordanesthesia.org.

The Principal Investigator of AIM is Larry Chu, MD., Assistant Professor of Anesthesia, Stanford University School of Medicine.

There are other anesthesia apps to choose from as well. One example is iAnesthesia: Case Logs. This app was designed for easy caseload tracking. Here are some of the touted features:

– The iPhone automatically syncs case data to the secure CaseLog Database

– Stores all of your anesthesia case log data in one convenient and organized location

– Even if you forget your iPhone, you can enter anesthesia case log data online quickly and easily

– You have 24-hour access to your data.

And then there is the popular Epocrates for the iPhone. Epocrates is the most popular mobile drug reference resource used by healthcare providers at the point of care. According to the description in the Apple Store, “physicians choose Epocrates 3 to 1 as their point of care drug reference of choice.”

In a recent press release, MBA Medical Business Associates announced an increased focus and capital investment in services and technology to support anesthesiologists. In an effort to improve the efficiency of anesthesia billing and the availability of information for anesthesiologists MBA  developed a custom designed practice management system which includes a smart phone application, an internet portal, and a computer-based program.

This practice management solution for anesthesia was designed around the ability to import patient and case information from the hospital while also offering an interface for physicians to enter additional case information independent from the hospital system.  The equally-important second objective of this initiative was to provide physicians remote access to all pertinent information about their cases through the physician interface. Aside from providing valuable reporting capability, this would also allow providers to confirm that their services have been billed correctly and ultimately get paid correctly.