Negative Analysis Of Ambulatory Surgery Centers

Ambulatory surgery centers (ASCs) are seeing an uptick in activity in recent years, as procedures have shifted from hospital inpatient, to hospital outpatient - now ASCs. According to Becker's ASC Review, numerous reasons exist for the transition, including patient and provider convenience and cost-savings, high-quality outcomes, and technology that enables sophisticated ambulatory surgery procedures.

Shutterstock Image #6502933 ---- Alt Text: Ambulatory Surgery procedures improve in quality ---- Caption: Ambulatory surgery centers are upgrading their services and improving price transparency.

Because of the growing popularity, hospitals and healthcare systems demonstrate growing interest in finding ways to get access to the highly attractive
For one, ambulatory surgery procedures offered in these facilities are becoming increasingly complex. On the financial side of the industry, ASCs are improving price transparency and offering more options for payment include bundled payments and packages for self-pay. Let's take a deeper look at how ambulatory surgery centers are improving to meet the demands of the changing marketplace.

Price Transparency is Key to Bring in More Patients

Michele Bossi is the administrator at OSS Health Ambulatory Surgery Center. She shares her insights with Becker's ASC Review about how her orthopedic surgery center is rising above the competition by offering self-pay options for patients and improving price transparency, OSS offers patients total transparency of their prices allowing their patients to pay completely out of pocket for specific ambulatory surgery procedures. Thus far, the results have been impressive.

Bossi explains that:

"The physicians, physician assistants, and staff of OSS Health are dedicated to providing the highest level of quality, safety, and customer satisfaction. Our transparent pricing initiative takes this commitment to the next level by moving our business model from simply being on the list of insurance company and hospital system “allowed providers” to one that competes for providing your care on the basis of quality and
However, patients can still obtain this price information prior to surgery. With the many patient financial advocates available at OSS, patients have access to dedicated professionals to guide them through the process.

Ambulatory Surgery Procedures Show Improvement

One California-based surgery center, Central Coast Surgery Center, is taking the necessary steps to decrease the probability of infections and wrong-site procedures. The administrator, Patrick Haley, explains how the staff members are achieving this goal in an article with Becker's ASC Review:

"We have always had the patient and surgeon independently mark the site of surgery, but have recently transitioned to having the surgeon lead the time-out in the room rather than the circulator. This puts the ownership upon the primary surgeon and per staff reports [and] has been more effective in getting the whole team's attention. We are all doing time-outs in our rooms, but taking a good look at the quality of that one moment in time is