There has been no such thing as business as usual in health care and in the medical specialty of anesthesiology in 2020, but ASA marches on. By the time this article is published, we will be at the end of one ASA governance year and beginning another.

Since the advent of the novel coronavirus in Wuhan, China in late 2019, there has been a resurgent interest in formerly arcane epidemiologic topics. One concept that has been revisited of late is that of “herd” immunity. In principle, this occurs when a significant enough portion of a population has become immune to an infectious disease; this can occur either by recovery from a prior infection or effective vaccination.

How much does knee arthroplasty cost? That is a more complicated question than it may seem upon first consideration. Based on my early career experience as a health care management consultant, I am confident that the correct answer is, “It depends.” It depends on the definition and scope of costs to be analyzed, it depends on from whose perspective the cost assessment is, and it depends, in part, on the purpose of estimating the costs in the first place.

ASA is pleased to present the annual commercial conversion factor survey for 2020. Each summer we survey anesthesiology practices across the country. We ask them to report up to five of their largest managed care (commercial) contract conversion factors (CF) and the percentage each contract rep-resents of their commercial population, along with some demographic information.