Overlapping surgeries to face US Senate inquiry

The Boston Globe reports:

The chairman of a powerful US Senate committee has asked 20 hospital systems, including the parent company of Massachusetts General Hospital, to provide detailed records about the controversial practice of allowing surgeons to operate on more than one patient at a time.

Senator Orrin G. Hatch, a Utah Republican who heads the Finance Committee, has requested the information, including the total number of “concurrent surgeries,’’ broken down by specialty, at each hospital from 2011 to 2015, and policies about whether patients are informed beforehand.

Committee staffers have already met with representatives of the American College of Surgeons, the world’s largest surgeons’ organization, which is drafting new guidelines to regulate double-booking of surgeries in the wake of a recent Globe Spotlight Team report on the practice.

Gulp.