March 5, 2025- Outpatient care is booming – in fact, more than 80% of surgeries are now performed in outpatient settings, outsourcing these procedures to ambulatory surgery centers.
The influx of specialization
Part of what makes specializing work in the ambulatory space is the autonomy granted to these facilities by simply not being a hospital. In a hospital setting, there are so many different moving pieces that go into a patient stay that it becomes just about impossible to offer any level of specialized care.
Dr. Neal Badlani, an orthopedic surgeon who specializes in minimally invasive spine surgery, wrote in The Journal of Spine Surgery, “Compared to hospitals, ASCs have a much greater capacity to pick and choose what procedures they perform, who their patients are, and what processes both clinical and administrative are to be used in their centers. This autonomy results in, proportionately, far less overhead for the facility. Specifically, the lower overhead costs can be achieved by limiting the scope of procedures.”
This surge of ASC specialization is likely because physicians are pushing the drive to develop new ASCs. A report from the ASC Association says that by leveraging a focused model for specific procedures, ASCs can provide a more consistent and controlled environment that largely avoids the many challenges of delivering a multitude of different surgical and medical services.
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