The official podcast of the Anesthesia Patient Safety Foundation (APSF) is hosted by Alli Bechtel, MD, featuring the latest information and news in perioperative and anesthesia patient safety. The APSF podcast is intended for anesthesiologists, anesthetists, clinicians and other professionals with an interest in anesthesiology, and patient safety advocates around the world.
The Anesthesia Patient Safety Podcast delivers the best of the APSF Newsletter and website directly to you, so you can listen on the go! This includes some of the most important COVID-19 information on airway management, ventilators, personal protective equipment (PPE), drug information, and elective surgery recommendations.
Don’t forget to check out APSF.org for the show notes that accompany each episode, and email us at podcast@APSF.org with your suggestions for future episodes. Visit us at APSF.org/podcast and at @APSForg on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram.
If your preop clinic feels overloaded, the answer might not be “work harder” it might be “triage smarter.” We share highlights from the 2026 APSF Stoelting Conference on how perioperative teams can match resources to risk, protect access for complex patients, and improve safety across the full surgical journey.
We dig into the Cleveland Clinic approach to risk stratification using readmission and mortality data, then translate it into real pathways: virtual preoperative evaluation for low risk patients, focused in-person assessment for high risk patients, and advanced care planning for the most vulnerable. The operational upside is real, too: telemedicine can lower cost per encounter, scale staffing without adding rooms, and free up time for the patients who truly need it.
From there, we fast forward to what happens after surgery, where post discharge care often determines whether patients recover smoothly or bounce back to the hospital. The data driven message is clear: earlier follow up for high risk patients can reduce mortality and readmissions. We also explore what a safer AI future requires, including the cognitive traps behind missed AI mistakes and a practical rule for calibration: treat AI like a junior teammate with strong training and no references or real world experience.
Finally, we challenge ourselves to treat patient experience as a vital sign, connect it to standardized perioperative outcomes, and consider how transparency efforts like Leapfrog safety grades can drive change. If you care about anesthesia patient safety, perioperative medicine, and trustworthy AI in healthcare, subscribe, share the episode with a colleague, and leave a review so more clinicians can find it.
For show notes & transcript, visit our episode page at apsf.org: https://www.apsf.org/podcast/329-smarter-perioperative-triage/
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