Becker's ASC Review

11 ASC MANAGEMENT 5 trends ASCs should watch By Angie Stewart A SCs stand to benefit from several trends as the healthcare landscape rapidly evolves, according to ECG Management Consultants Principal Naya Ke- hayes and Associate Principal Sean Hartzell. At Becker's ASC 25th Annual Meeting: e Business and Operations of ASCs, Oct. 18-20 in Chicago, the pair discussed the changing healthcare environment and what it means for ASCs. Here are five trends to watch: 1. Procedure migration. In response to pressure from employers and payers, higher acuity cases are moving from the hospital inpatient setting to hospital outpatient departments and ASCs. ese procedures traditionally migrated to ASCs last, but Medicare is beginning to skip HOPDs, Ms. Kehayes and Mr. Hartzell agreed. 2. New payment models. Payers are of- fering deeper discounts in return for creating smaller networks. Payers say the increased volume will offset the discounts. Payers have also developed benefit designs that could drive hospitals to partner with ASCs, Ms. Kehayes said. 3. Payer consolidation. With wide- spread payer consolidation, there's an increase in hospital-physician alignment, and more equity partners are buying groups with ASCs. e resulting "mega-groups" have more negotiating power. In this envi- ronment, Ms. Kehayes said, "Understanding your cost is critical to negotiating reasonable and adequate reimbursement." 4. Hospital investment in ASCs. Hos- pitals are proactively approaching ASCs and physicians aer seeing outpatient surgical volume steadily grow over the past 20 years, Mr. Hartzell said. ASCs offer hospital sys- tems several benefits: access to new volume, lower costs, mitigation of future losses, increased efficiency and better physician alignment and satisfaction. 5. Disruptive economic models. e many blockbuster deals announced over the past few years, including the Amazon venture, all focus on better experience, lower costs and increased access, accord- ing to Mr. Hartzell. Amazon's Whole Foods acquisition shows it's focused on eliminating waste rather than generating profits, and it's bringing that revolutionary economic model to healthcare. "is is another thing that makes hospital CEOs quake," he said. "ASCs are already fo- cusing on the experience, the cost, the access … Hospitals need to start to partner with those folks already down that road."n Salary gap between ASC and hospital leaders narrows — Here's how much By Rachel Popa O R Manager's 2018 Salary/Ca- reer survey reported seven key statistics on ASC leader pay and demographics. Here are seven key survey insights to know: 1. Forty-three percent of hospital leaders said they earned $120,000 or more, com- pared to 37 percent of ASC leaders. 2. In 2017, 40 percent of hospital leaders said they earned $120,000 or more, com- pared to 29 percent for ASC leaders. 3. Only 16 percent of ASC leaders said they earned less than $80,000. 4. The average age of respondents was 51.7 years old. 5. Thirty-four percent of respondents had a master's degree. 6. Eighty-nine percent were female. 7. Over 70 percent were RNs. n Phishing scam hits Georgia Spine and Orthopaedics of Atlanta — 6 details By Angie Stewart G eorgia Spine and Ortho- paedics of Atlanta dis- covered an unauthorized person gained access to an employee's email account through a phishing scam, and reported the incident to HHS Nov. 16. Here's what you should know: 1. The scammer compromised one mailbox July 11 after an employee opened a malicious link or docu- ment in an email that appeared legitimate. 2. The account contained patient names and other common medical information. A small number of emails contained Social Security numbers and driver's license num- bers. The scammer likely retained a copy of certain emails. 3. In total, 7,012 individuals were affected. 4. GSO brought in technical and legal experts to investigate the inci- dent and notified affected patients. 5. GSO urged affected patients to closely monitor account state- ments and credit reports and report any discrepancies to author- ities. The organization set up a toll- free hotline to address patients' questions or concerns. The organization published a no- tice on its website: "Unfortunately, phishing scams are hard to detect. Upon discovery of the incident, we promptly terminated the unauthor- ized access. We also engaged out- side technical and legal experts to investigate the incident thoroughly to determine the full nature and scope of the access, to ensure our information technology systems are truly secure, and to identify (through a very tedious technical assessment and hand document review process) the exact emails that were actually accessed by the third party." A representative could not be reached for comment at the time of publication. n

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