When an anaesthetist provides a service to a patient, they are not doing this in the role of an employee of the hospital or the surgeon. The fees paid to an anaesthetist are paid by the patient, usually in conjunction with their insurance provider.
Each anaesthetist is an independent practitioner, and calculates their own fees independently of other anaesthetists, which is the reason why patients may receive different charges for different operations, or for the same operation by different anaesthetists.
The Australian Medical Association (AMA) and Australian Society of Anaesthetists (ASA) prepare a list of medical services and fees for private patient anaesthesia services, and index this each year. Most Anaesthetists base their charges on this indexed list of services.
Fees for anaesthetic interventions vary depending on many different factors, including the time and nature of the pre-anaesthetic assessment, the complexity of the operation, and the time that the operation takes. Additional fees may apply for patients who are more complex, more frail, or for whom the operation is performed as an emergency or “out of hours”.
The anaesthetist is present during the entire operation, and their role is not constrained to the start and end of the procedure. They make decisions while the patient is anaesthetized in order to keep the patient safe at all times.
