Concurrent surgeries come under new scrutiny

In Minnesota, heart surgeons occasionally performed overlapping operations at hospitals roughly eight miles apart, leaving the second patient waiting under anesthesia for the doctor to arrive. In Wisconsin, a medical school paid $840,000 this year to settle a lawsuit alleging that neurosurgeons illegally billed Medicare for simultaneous spine surgeries that were largely done by unsupervised medical residents. And here in Boston, a patient at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center confronted her doctor in 2011 after learning that he had rushed her into surgery — necessitating a more powerful anesthetic than she wanted — because he was juggling two operating rooms.