A front page entry in a recent issue of Anesthesiology News: “Physicians Versus CRNAs: Redefining Roles in the Changing Landscape of Health Care.”  Sounds like a prize fight or a gang war: Crips vs. Bloods.  I immediately got my boxing gloves on, readying myself for another bout of vitriol and dislike thinly disguised as concerns for patient safety.  But the author, Michael DeCicca, a second-year anesthesia resident, surprised me.

He writes: “Logically the number of ambulatory, diagnostic and less-invasive cases for the newly insured will increase at a greater rate over time than the complex, open, marathon cases reserved for the very ill.  These simpler cases fall well within the ability of CRNAs.  When looking at indisputable facts, unsupervised CRNAs operate at a lower up-front cost to the health care system. Making value judgments about CRNAs as a group is as effective as a Luddite throwing rocks at a loom.”

OK, you say, but DeCicca is just a resident. He doesn’t know anything, and he has no skin in the game yet.  He’ll change his tune.  Plus, I can’t remember what a Luddite is, the cheeky showoff.  Perhaps.  But the young are often the first to sense and welcome change.  Residents are in a position to closely observe the business into which they will be jumping and to sense the way the wind blows.  Luddites, by the way, were artisans of hand-made lace and textiles who tried to defend against the inevitability of the mechanical loom by trying to destroy it.  DeCicca poses the question at the core of all the fighting:  “How do we anesthesiologists remain competitive in a market where a cheaper alternative is available?”

Anesthesiologists’ response to this question has been mostly defensive: restrictive legislation, outcome studies, political lobbying.  We have responded to our perceived threat in the same way the pharmaceutical industry has responded to the presence of cheaper alternatives in the form of generics, older and less expensive proven drugs, and Canadian products: Lobbying to prevent foreign imports or Internet sales, aggressive marketing of the newest drugs, and patent litigation far overshadow willingness to participate in a competitive international market.

In fact, in the very same issue of Anesthesiology News, there is the report that the ASA is spending $470,000 to internally research the association between MDs and CRNAs and clinical and economic outcomes.  Responding to a challenge by Dr. John Neeld in 2013, the study is the latest in a load of research trying to prove one group is better than the other.  The Cochrane Database, which deals in meta-analysis of groups of related studies, has already weighed in with the conclusion that “no definitive statement could be made about the possible superiority of one type of anesthesia care over another.”  Dissatisfying for both sides, I’m sure.

DeCicca answers his question in the same way that I have on this site and others, in a much nicer way:  “We must highlight the value of our unique expertise.”  Physicians are more qualified to take care of the big cases, the sick patients, the complex anesthetics.  We should embrace those challenges.  Average, everyday plodding through healthy ambulatory cases is not going to be enough anymore.  We have to be “the guy,” the manager of care, the one everyone looks to for answers, the one patients consider with awe and respect.  Not just “anesthesia” at the head of the table.

Now I have someone next to me when the rotten tomatoes come out.

Shirie Leng, a former nurse, is an anesthesiologist who blogs at medicine for real.