Even though some minor heart procedures have been taking place in outpatient settings for years, performing more complex same-day cardiovascular interventions is very much in its infancy....

What has changed is the steady growth in awareness among patients and payers about surgery centers and the reliable patient care and positive outcomes they deliver. What hasn’t changed, unfortunately, is the need for...

Accreditation is a crucial element of a successful ASC. It positions a new facility to receive Medicare funding in months, compared to potentially waiting for a year or more to receive certification from your...

With reimbursements dropping and construction costs on the rise, successfully building a new ASC from the ground up requires a Herculean effort from a diverse group of experts....

The $1.7 trillion federal spending package passed by the lame-duck Congress last month includes a 2% reduction in physicians’ pay for Medicare cases, which experts in the same-day surgical industry say will have multiple immediate negative...

A mere four procedures were added to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services’ (CMS) ASC-approved list for 2023, a decision met with disappointment and frustration by advocates for ambulatory surgery centers across the U.S....

A proposal in California that would have expanded the scope of practice for optometrists in the state was passed by the state legislature, but Gov. Gavin Newsom effectively vetoed the bill by failing to sign it before it expired on Sept. 30....

When Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker signed into law last year a measure that required hospitals and ambulatory surgery centers to eliminate surgical smoke, it was a big win for the nurses...

Interventional radiology (IR) is slowly finding its way into ASCs. IR physicians perform a wide variety of “pinhole surgeries” — minimally invasive procedures that leverage catheters, wires, needles and sheaths — using image guidance...

As the current U.S. inflation rate approaches 10%, ambulatory surgery centers are already facing financial pressure from expenses for goods and services and staffing costs. So while CMS has proposed an increase...

The state-of-the-art Shields Surgery Center opened last summer in Medford, Mass., four years after its developers devised a proof of concept. “Looking back, it’s hard to believe...

The importance of same-day outpatient cardiology was on full display in 2020 — during the worst months of the pandemic — and I was fortunate enough to be in the thick...

Surgical facilities across the country are in a holding pattern as court injunctions have temporarily blocked federal COVID-19 vaccination mandates for about half of the...

Three federal judges have temporarily blocked CMS’ proposed COVID-19 vaccine mandate for healthcare workers that was set to take effect on Jan. 4, making an already murky situation for surgical professionals...

The 2022 Hospital Outpatient Prospective Payment System and ASC Payment System proposed by CMS is filled with changes that are more curious than cause for serious concern. CMS, which ultimately intends to slow...

The catherization lab built in the new Quincy Medical Group (QMG) Surgery Center is the first of its kind in Illinois and showcases the tantalizing potential of outpatient...

The FDA announced earlier this year it was investigating the cause of 450 infections in patients who had undergone procedures involving urological endoscopes. The cases, ...

Brenda Ulmer, MN, RN, CNOR, and Angela Hohn, RN, BSN, BS, CNOR, have accomplished so much together that it’s almost impossible to believe that the two...

Throughout my career as a perioperative director and surgery center administrator, I've developed information packets that inform my teams about what accreditation surveyors might look for and ask about. I eventually thought...

Early this year, one of the first total hip replacements paid for by Medicare was performed on a woman in her late 80s at our outpatient surgery center. This was only possible because the Centers for Medicare...