[Anesthesiology-led the high-quality development of a new pattern for day surgery]

As a critical breakthrough in healthcare service model innovation, day surgery has evolved over nearly two decades in China from a mere efficiency tool into a strategic vehicle for systematically reshaping the landscape of surgical care delivery. Currently, the development of day surgery in China faces three core bottlenecks-policy lag and implementation obstacles, resource allocation imbalance, and delayed cognitive transformation-resulting in a significant gap compared with developed countries. Over the next decade, the focus should shift from "pure volume expansion" to "parallel advancement of quantity and quality" by establishing a four-pillar high-quality development system characterized by "standard guidance, payment coordination, tiered collaboration, and digital empowerment". In this process, anesthesiologists, leveraging their professional advantages in perioperative medicine, should become the core drivers of enhanced recovery after surgery implementation and assume a "hub" role in the full-process management of day surgery, leading the strategic transformation of anesthesiology from "intraoperative support" to"comprehensive perioperative management".