National ASC Month is in Full Swing!

Ambulatory surgery centers, as well as the state and national associations that represent them, are busy this month celebrating the invaluable medical care they provide to their communities, hosting facility tours, visiting legislative halls and conducting social media campaigns to raise awareness of all the stellar work they do.

Among them is the California Ambulatory Surgery Association, which has more than 400 members.

“CASA is pleased to promote National ASC Month and we are posting throughout the month on our social media channels to thank our members for all they are doing to advance the industry and provide quality patient care, as well as highlighting facts about ASC success,” says CASA’s Executive Director Elizabeth LaBouyer. “We are always working to promote the value and contributions of ASCs throughout the year, and having a national awareness month provides an extra level of interest and an opening to help educate the public about the unique role of ASCs in delivering high quality, safe, cost-effective surgical care.”

There is still time for ASCs from across the country to celebrate National ASC Month to heighten the awareness of your facility in your community by holding open houses for nearby residents or policymakers. Simply posting success stories on your social media platforms would help to get the word out.

The Texas Ambulatory Surgery Center Society, for example, recently visited the Texas Legislature as part of a year-long effort to track and comment on nearly 300 bills that could impact the outpatient surgery industry. The glut of legislative proposals came after a shortened “pandemic session” in 2021. TASCS officials say many of the bills would hurt ASCs if left to pass unchecked.

“Prior to session, TASCS … anticipated the legislature’s intent in addressing big health care issues, and how ambulatory surgery centers could be caught up in blanket legislation, with broad definitions of ‘health care facility’ or ‘health care provider,’ and this is exactly what happened,” notes a TASCS blog post from early August. “The legislature was laser-focused on transparency related to health care facilities, physicians, and providers in a way that we have not seen before. Members filed bills to restrict physician/provider authority, eliminate fees, mandate price controls, and require specific payment methods .”

“While claiming these changes would lower health care costs and provide greater consumer protections, the practical outcome would have distorted the health care marketplace, jeopardized the livelihood of providers, resulted in significant financial losses or increased costs for providers, and/or contributed to the rising prices of health care for the consumer.”

Ms. LaBouyer says getting the word out about how ASCs positively impact the healthcare system overall is extremely important.

“The data and quality reporting consistently show strong measures of patient safety and positive patient outcomes, while ASCs create major cost savings for the healthcare system,” she says. It is important to increase understanding of how ASCs are able to achieve these results so that healthcare providers, insurers, and policymakers continue to move more patients and more surgical cases into the ASC setting.” OSM