What health systems can gain from shifting sites of service?
Health systems need to differentiate from new players offering easier access and lower costs. Office-based procedures could be the key.
Decreases in reimbursements, unpredictable schedules, inefficiencies, patient inconvenience; these are a few of the many reasons physicians are moving procedures out of HOPDs and ASCs and into their own clinic-based and in-office surgical suites.
Advances in surgical technology and methods along with the buzz created throughout the healthcare community about the benefits of this option have increased the utility and safety of minimally-invasive procedures performed in the office setting, while at the same time insurance providers have increased reimbursements to doctors who work in their own space.
“Traditionally, people think about things like doing a suture, removing a cyst, or doing a nasal tracheal endoscopy, small things, and automatically think about an operating room with the big overhead lights and the circulating nurse and scrub tech, being in a hospital,” says Dr. Meghan Valach, Chief Medical Officer for Mobile Anesthesiologists. “You can take those procedures outside of the operating room completely and do them in a regular office space, or surgical suites. The nice part about that is [physicians] can integrate it into their daily practice. They’re able to see patients over in their clinic, have the same staff using the same medical records, right on-site, actually have the people who know the patient take care of them for the procedure.”
But this shift in site of service is not without its list of considerations and due diligence items when implementing. We’ve compiled a list of the things physicians and their teams should keep top-of-mind as they weigh what office-based procedures could mean to their practice.
While the shift to office-based procedures can seem overwhelming at first glance, it is important to remember it can add to your bottom line, help you regain control of your practice, add valuable time back to your life, your staff’s lives, and your patients’ lives, and be part of the move towards true value-based care in the U.S. The long-term benefits significantly outweigh the short-term investment and change, and one you will never regret
Health systems need to differentiate from new players offering easier access and lower costs. Office-based procedures could be the key.
The model of hospital-centric care is giving way to specialists and ambulatory settings. The US currently has 9200 ambulatory surgery centers, surgical offices, and surgical clinics, with more breaking ground every single week. These facilities, often hospital affiliated, aren’t just ready, they’re custom built to provide surgical care to patients that do not require the full freight of a hospital, doing so with the same record on outcomes in less time at a lower cost. They also free up hospital resources by allowing for more focus on sicker patients.
Veterans of the business, practice, and policy of healthcare will all tell you the same thing. Contrary to the best efforts of the AHA, ambulatory surgery is finally being allowed to meet the needs of a population that is both growing and aging in ways that hospitals, increasingly falling into the category of acute care,...
Healthcare in the United States has been in an ongoing era of consolidation since the late 1970s with the early growth of conglomerated health systems and accelerating in the mid-1990s with the launch of the “payvider” model, where large scale payers began acquiring health systems, creating a closed loop. The trend continued in the early...