Clinical Services - Anesthesiology

The Department of Anesthesiology is committed to excellence in clinical service. Our anesthesia care team consists of 41 board-certified anesthesiologists, 62 anesthesiology residents, 6 pain medicine fellows, 1 critical care medicine fellow, and 38 nurse anesthetists. The anesthesia care team is assisted by technical and nursing support services provided by the various clinical venues.

Current clinical venues include:

University Hospital
Audie L. Murphy Memorial Veterans Administration Hospital
CHRISTUS Santa Rosa Hospital – Northwest
Medical Arts and Research Center (MARC)
University Center for Pain Medicine

Types of anesthesia services provided include:

Preoperative evaluations
General anesthesia
Regional anesthesia
Trauma anesthesia
Cardiac anesthesia
Transplant anesthesia
Obstetric anesthesia
Neuroanesthesia
Pediatric anesthesia
Critical care medicine
Acute pain management
Chronic pain management

Anesthesiology clinical services have expanded significantly in recent years, and we anticipate this trend will continue. Our clinical enterprise continues to grow in both scope and volume. Operating room anesthetics have seen an annual 5-8% steady year over year growth and we are on track to reach 24,000 annual cases in 2019. On the horizon is an expansion of operating room sites (1st quarter 2020), the development of a transplant dedicated Center for Life (4th 2019 – 1st quarter 2020), an innovative Heart/Vascular/Endoscopy Institute (2021), and the opening of a Women and Children’s Tower with double capacity for obstetric services (2022). The Department is continuously and aggressively recruiting board-certified anesthesiologists and certified registered nurse anesthetists to fill these clinical needs.

The Department of Anesthesiology is committed to optimum clinical efficiency while maintaining the highest standard of patient care and safety. Our efforts to improve OR efficiency include analysis of the daily report of efficiency parameters (start times, cut times, etc.) and establishing benchmarks for these parameters. For the 2019 fiscal year to date, our anesthesiologists’ productivity is 1.6 times greater than the MGMA median for academic anesthesiologists.

The Department of Anesthesiology is committed to electronic medical recordkeeping (EMR). In May 2020, University Hospital System will fully transition to Epic Systems EMR and we anticipate this move will provide better data capture and extraction opportunities from our anesthetic record. Having a more robust and fully integrated AIMS (anesthesia information management system) provides endless opportunities in research, quality improvement and operational efficiency. Our robust clinical enterprise stands at the forefront of cutting-edge of medicine and we look forward to a sustained future of growth and operational excellence.

For more information, please contact:

Benjamin Wallisch, DO, FASA
Medical Director of OR Services
University Hospital
wallisch@uthscsa.edu

James N. Rogers, MD
Chief of Anesthesiology
Audie L. Murphy Memorial VA Hospital
rogersjn@uthscsa.edu