The Cost of Having Anesthesiologists Involved in Screening Colonoscopy

Several studies have shown that routine endoscopies increasingly include anesthesiologists, but the underlying costs and contributors to this trend have not been elucidated. To address this issue, researchers evaluated Medicare data from more than 16,000 screening colonoscopies performed between 2001 and 2005.

The proportion of screening colonoscopies that involved anesthesiologists more than doubled during the study, from 11% in 2001 to 23% in 2005. Anesthesiologists were involved in 17% of procedures overall, but the proportion varied greatly by region (ranging from a high of 58% in New Jersey to a low of 2% in San Francisco) and by the specialty of the colonoscopist (24% for surgeons; 18% for gastroenterologists; 11% for primary care prov…