An office-based anesthetic is defined as an anesthetic that is performed in an outpatient venue (office, procedure room) that is not accredited as either an ambulatory surgery center (ASC) or as a hospital (Hausman LM, Rosenblatt MA. Office-based anesthesia. In: Barash PG, Cullen BF, Stoelting RK, Cahalan MK, Ortega R, Stock MC, eds.Clinical Anesthesia. Philadelphia: Lippincott Williams & Wilkins; 2013:860–875). Along with providing safe anesthesia to patients (healthy to medically challenged) undergoing increasingly complex procedures, anesthesia professionals must understand office safety and policy, legal and financial issues such as antitrust laws, and billing and collection issues. A challenge to office-based practitioners is that presently there is little or no training in office-based anesthesia (OBA) within the standard anesthesia residency program.

1. Brief Historical Perspective of Office-Based Anesthesia
2. Advantages and Disadvantages
3. Office Safety
4. Patient Selection
5. Surgeon Selection
6. Office Selection and Requirements
7. Procedure Selection
8. Anesthetic Techniques
9. Postanesthesia Care Unit (PACU)
10. Regulations
11. Business and Legal Aspects
12. Conclusions