Influence of the type of anesthesia provider on costs of labor analgesia to the Texas Medicaid program.

Background: The Texas Medicaid Program (Medicaid) defines billable time for labor analgesia as face-to-face time; therefore, anesthesia providers determine billed time. The authors' goal was to determine the influence of anesthesia providers on labor analgesia costs billed to Medicaid.

Methods: Under the Freedom of Information Act, Medicaid provided data on claims paid for 6 months in 2001 for labor analgesia administered during the course of a vaginal delivery. Claims were either time based (codes 00946 or 00955) or a flat fee (codes 26311 or 26319). Using modifiers, the authors grouped time-based claims as either anesthesiologist group or certified registered nurse anesthetist (CRNA) group. The cost to Medicaid was based on the 2001 fee schedule. The conversion factor was 18.21 USD per American Society of Anesthesiologists unit. The flat-fee reimbursement was 152.50 USD. CRNA services were paid at 85% of the fee schedule. Average time per time claim, percent of providers with more than 4 h of billed time, and cost per claim were determined for each group. Providers with more than 120 claims (> 20 claims/month) were considered high-volume.

Results: The database included 21,378 claims (anesthesiologist group: 12,698 claims from 219 providers; CRNA group: 8,680 claims from 117 providers). For time-based claims, the average time per case was significantly higher in the CRNA group (146 min) than in the anesthesiologist group (105 min). The CRNA group cost to Medicaid (225.11 USD) was 19% more per claim than the anesthesiologist group (189.26 USD). The difference in cost per claim was greater among high-volume providers--213.10 USD for the CRNA group versus 168.76 USD for the anesthesiologist group. If a flat-fee program were instituted using the average cost per claim for all groups (203.81 USD), the Texas Medicaid program would save more than 500,000 USD annually.

Conclusions: The costs of labor analgesia billed to Texas Medicaid were 19% to 26% less per patient when provided by anesthesiologists than by CRNAs, despite lower per-unit reimbursement of CRNAs.