Editor's Note According to a June 20 article published by JDSupra from law firm Waller Lansden Dortch & Davis, recent government action out of the Justice Department involving ambulatory surgery centers (ASCs) and anesthesia provider arrangements points "to a need to carefully vet these partnerships,” Becker’s ASC Review June 21…
Editor's Note The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) has recently updated its State Operations Manual (SOM) Appendix L—Guidance for Surveyors: Ambulatory Surgical Centers (ASCs), making conforming revisions to the regulatory tags and interpretive guidelines, as well as clarifications and technical corrections to other guidance areas including medical history…
Editor's Note According to a June 28 report from Future Market Insights, the global ambulatory surgery center (ASC) market is projected to hit $130.6 billion by 2031, Becker’s ASC Review June 29 reports. The projection considers a 3.9% compound annual growth rate from the $85.4 billion total the global ASC…
Editor's Note Researchers at the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, New York City, gathered an interdisciplinary team to organize a safe and time efficient precleaning workflow for their fast-paced GI clinic that decreased time spent precleaning by 50%. The researchers identified inadequate precleaning processes, including staff who did not follow…
Editor's Note In this study from the University of California, San Diego, La Jolla, researchers developed a machine learning model that improved the ability to predict surgery end times and PACU discharge at a range of start times in an ambulatory surgery center (ASC). Of 13,447 surgical procedures analyzed, the…
Inflation in the US has recently hit a 40-year high of 8.6%, and according to Becker’s ASC Review, ambulatory surgery centers (ASCs) are hurting from “soaring inflation costs.” Labor, supply, and equipment costs are going up, but reimbursement rates remain low. “From equipment to supplies to staffing, expenses continue to…
Editor's Note Becker’s ASC Review June 15 featured interviews with 17 ambulatory surgery center (ASC) leaders to discuss their day-to-day challenges. The most pressing issues that emerged were staffing concerns (11 out of the 17 interviewed cited staffing), supply chain obstacles, and mitigating rising costs against less reimbursements. Here are…
Editor's Note According to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) Quality, Certification, and Oversight Reports (QCOR) page, which gives the public access to citation frequency reports, infection control was a top area of focus for CMS surveyors in 2021, the Ambulatory Surgery Center Association journal ASC Focus June…
Editor's Note New research from the Medical Group Management Association (MGMA), via the 2022 edition of MGMA DataDive Provider Compensation, revealed that compensation for all physicians is on the rise, PR Newswire May 24 reports. The data comprises more than 192,000 providers across more than 7,700 physician-owned and hospital-owned organizations…
Editor's Note The Joint Commission reported on June 1 that a new independent study of 161 Joint Commission-accredited ambulatory surgery centers (ASCs) finds that for each dollar invested in accreditation, an organization has that dollar returned along with an additional $6.28 in benefits. Key areas of financial return include: Revenue,…