The controversial practice has been standard in many teaching hospitals for decades, its safety and ethics largely unquestioned and its existence unknown to those most affected: people undergoing surgery.
But over the past two years, the issue of overlapping surgery _ in which a doctor operates on two patients in different rooms during the same time period _ has ignited an impassioned debate in the medical community, attracted scrutiny by the powerful Senate Finance Committee that oversees Medicare and Medicaid, and prompted some hospitals, including the University of Virginia's, to circumscribe the practice.
Known as "running two rooms" _ or double-booked, simultaneous or concurrent surgery _ the practice occurs in teaching hospitals where senior attending surgeons delegate trainees _ usually residents or fellows _ to perform parts of one surgery while the attending surgeon works on a second patient in another operating room. Sometimes senior surgeons aren't even in the OR and are seeing patients elsewhere.
Hospitals decide whether to allow the practice and are primarily responsible for policing it. Medicare billing rules permit it as long as the attending surgeon is present during the critical portion of each operation _ and that portion is defined by the surgeon. And while it occurs in many specialties, double-booking is believed to be most common in orthopedics, cardiac surgery and neurosurgery.
The issue was catapulted into public consciousness in October 2015 by an exhaustive investigation of concurrent surgery at Harvard's famed Massachusetts General Hospital by The Boston Globe. The validity of the story has been vehemently disputed by hospital officials who defend their care as safe and appropriate.
The article detailed concerns by some doctors and other hospital staff about complications _ including one patient who was paralyzed and two who died _ possibly linked to double-booking over a 10-year period. It described patients waiting under anesthesia for prolonged periods and surgeons who could not be located, leaving residents or fellows to perform surgeries without supervision.
Patients who signed standard consent forms said they were not told their surgeries were double-booked; some said they would never have agreed had they known.
The practice has also figured prominently in cases in South Florida, Nashville and, most recently, Seattle.
Critics of the practice, who include some surgeons and patient-safety advocates, say that double-booking adds unnecessary risk, erodes trust and primarily enriches specialists. Surgery, they say, is not piecework and cannot be scheduled like trains: Unexpected complications are not uncommon.
All patients "deserve the sole and undivided attention of the surgeon, and that trumps all other considerations," said Michael Mulholland, chair of surgery at the University of Michigan Health System, which halted double-booking a decade ago. Surgeons might leave the room when a patient's incision is being closed, Mulholland said. A computerized system records the doctor's entry and exit.
"It doesn't do any good to check out your surgeon if they're not even going to be in the room," said Lisa McGiffert, director of Consumers Union's Safe Patient Project. "We all know about the dangers of multitasking. This adds a layer of danger if you have the most expert person coming in and out."
Indiana orthopedic surgeon James Rickert regards double-booking as a form of bait-and-switch. "The only reason it has continued is that patients are asleep," said Rickert, president of the Society for Patient-Centered Orthopedics, a doctor group.
"Having a fellow so you can run two rooms helps augment your income," he added. "You can bill for six procedures: You do three and the fellow does three." The critical portion of the operation required by Medicare and designated by the surgeon can mean "running in and checking two screws for 10 seconds."
Defenders of the practice, which has been the subject of a handful of studies with mixed results, say it can be done safely and allows more patients to receive care.
"It's extremely important for us to make sure (all surgeries are) done with the highest quality," said Peter Dunn, Mass General's executive medical director of perioperative administration. Officials at his hospital, Dunn said in a recent interview, have "never traced back a quality issue" to concurrent surgery, which involves a minority of procedures.
Mass General complies with all applicable guidelines and regulations, Dunn said. The hospital now explicitly requires doctors to inform patients if an operation will overlap as part of the consent process, which may occur just before the start of surgery.
In January, a Boston jury found that a Mass General spine surgeon who failed to inform a 45-year-old financial analyst that he was running two rooms was not responsible for the patient's subsequent quadriplegia.
