Editor's Note In addition to the uptick in acquiring outpatient facilities since 2023, UnitedHealth Group quietly acquired or created more than 250 subsidiaries last year, expanding its already vast network of services comprising a major health insurer, physician practices, a pharmacy benefit manager, and various other healthcare ventures, STAT March…

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Editor's Note Moving radiology services from hospitals to outpatient centers could slash healthcare costs by billions annually while improving patient care, according to a March 3 Radiology Business News report on a study published in the American Journal of Roentgenology (AJR). The study found that shifting just 10% of hospital-based…

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Ensuring safe, quality care requires precise alignment among inventory levels, delivery schedules, storage solutions, and every other element of the supply chain. A single missing piece of this puzzle—say, a delayed shipment or a storage issue—can disrupt the entire picture. Making the pieces fit can be difficult for any healthcare…

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Editor's Note According to medical experts, healthcare professionals in ambulatory surgery centers (ASCs) must be more vigilant in recognizing and managing suicidal ideation among patients, Pain Medicine News January 27 reports. With the increasing shift of surgical procedures from hospitals to ASCs, clinicians are more likely to encounter patients struggling…

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Editor's Note Healthcare construction has been seeing a shift toward outpatient facilities, with medical office buildings (MOBs) and similar structures taking center stage, Building Design + Construction November 1 reports. Citing data from different sources, including the MOB/outpatient facilities 2024 survey, American Society for Health Care Engineering, JLL’s Medical Outpatient…

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For many in the healthcare industry, imagining surgery without onsite sterile processing seems unthinkable. Then again, performing total joints in an ambulatory surgery center (ASC) was unthinkable 10 years ago. ASC sterile processing departments (SPDs) are generally not designed to handle the high volumes of instrument trays, vendor trays, and…

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Editor's Note Medicare and patient out-of-pocket costs are rising as vertical integration results in more procedures moving to hospital outpatient departments (HOPDs) than to ambulatory surgical centers (ASCs), Becker’s ASC Review reported on August 8. The article summarizes a study published July 25 in Science Direct. Described as "physician vertical…

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Some 800,000 knee replacements and 550,000 hip replacements are performed in the US each year. Factoring in the ever-expanding aging population, projections show the figure for knee replacements alone will explode to 3.5 million procedures being done annually by 2030—and that is just one type of procedure within a single…

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Editor's Note On July 10, CMS proposed Medicare payment rates for hospital outpatient and ambulatory surgery center (ASC) services for 2025.  Published annually, the Hospital Outpatient Prospective Payment System (OPPS) and ASC Payment System Proposed Rule will have a 60-day comment period, which this year ends September 9 prior to…

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Gastrointestinal (GI) endoscopy is one of the most common procedures in the US. Performed more than 17.1 million times per year in inpatient and outpatient hospital settings as well as ambulatory surgery centers (ASCs), GI procedures account for 68% of all endoscopies, according to a May 2022 article in Digestive…

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