Joan Rivers Surgeon Thinks Anesthesiologists Are a Waste of Money for Throat Procedure

EXCLUSIVE

The surgeon who performed the throat procedure on Joan Rivers the day she went into cardiac arrest wrote a article telling his fellow doctors it’s not cost-effective to have an anesthesiologist present for procedures like the one that killed Joan.

Dr. Lawrence Cohen — who was also the Medical Director of the Yorkville Endoscopy Focal point — wrote in 2012 … it was not always COST-EFFECTIVE to have an anesthesiologist on board for outpatient endoscopic procedures.  

Dr. Cohen writes, “Although we can all agree that [monitored anesthesia care] is a highly effective and safe method of sedation, the question is whether it is worth the extra cost to our shape care system.”

Dr. Cohen then answers his question: “The answer is clearly no.”

Dr. Cohen crunches the number in his article, saying the average cost for an anesthesiologist is $ 400 per procedure, but the risk of death is 1 out of 100,000. Cohen consequently concludes it costs $ 40,000,000 to save one life, adding that cost “far exceeds … an acceptable level of cost-effectiveness.”

There was an anesthesiologist present at the commencement of the procedure, but our sources say it’s unclear if she was there when Joan’s essential signs plummeted. A scathing report blamed the doctors for being inattentive and not noticing her essential signs were in the danger zone.