Becker's ASC Review

41 Executive Briefing right treatment to the right patient in the appropriate environment. We all know that there are surgeries that should always be done in the hospital setting for safety reasons, and there are surgeries that should be done in an ASC setting. A successful partnership between an ASC and hospital relies on making the transition between the two seamless for the physician. That particular aspect of the partnership takes a lot of work and transparency between the hospital and ASC, but the goal is to have the physician choose the appropriate site of care for their patients and then have convenience, whether that comes from common preference cards or policies across the system, for all parties to work together. Q: I imagine during the pandemic having hospital partners was beneficial for many ASCs. Can you share an example or two of times when that relationship with hospitals was advantageous for ASCs? JB: Our hospital partnership with Vanderbilt is a great example. Our surgery center in Nashville provided them with a safe and COVID-free environment in which the physicians could perform surgeries during the pandemic. Even during the original shutdown of elective surgeries, our facility stood ready to provide our supplies and other resources that Vanderbilt may have needed to care for patients. That ability to work together has helped both sides during this very unusual period of time. Q: Why are hospitals more interested in ASC partnerships today than in the past? JB: There are a lot of factors at play today in this dynamic – some of which weren't even around nine months ago. I believe that health systems are feeling more pressure than ever from all of their constituents — their patients, affiliated physicians and payers, including Medicare — to provide high quality, cost effective care. ASCs are a clear solution to that pressure. When you add in the current healthcare crisis, providers, hospitals and physicians are looking for a safe place to perform surgery and serve their patients. ASCs are the perfect solution to that as well because we have always been the high quality, high value setting for care. We also see physicians who, as a result of the current crisis, are looking for more opportunities. There are some procedures that accelerated the move to the outpatient setting and physicians are not likely to return to the hospital setting for those cases after the crisis. Those cases can be safely done in ASCs. Those are a few of the factors that are causing the uptick in ASC and health system partnerships. Q: How do you anticipate the ASC's role in the healthcare ecosystem will change in the next 12 to 24 months? JB: I believe ASCs will continue to grow their role in the healthcare system. All constituencies are looking for solutions to the challenges in the current healthcare system, and ASCs are a high-quality provider of value- based care. This is being recognized more among hospitals, physicians and payers, including Medicare, and most importantly among the patients. I see the future of ASCs being bright. Q: CMS recognized ASCs as the high-quality site of service and proposed several changes to the 2021 fee schedule, such as eliminating the inpatient only list. What does this mean for ASCs? JB: Obviously that change is very exciting for ASCs. Those of us who have been in the ASC industry for any length of time know the high quality and value that ASCs have and will continue to provide for the system. It's very nice to have that acknowledged by CMS, not to mention the commercial payers. Many of the procedures CMS is now moving to the ASC payable list have been done in ASCs with great results for years on the commercial side. With CMS acknowledging the ability of ASCs to provide services to the patient with the highest quality at a lower cost is an exciting step. We expect this to lead to significant growth in the ASC. Q: What are the big strategic advantages ASCs will have by partnering with Surgery Partners in the future? JB: Whether it's a standalone ASC looking for a corporate partner or health system looking for a partner to build out their ASC strategy, we provide a lot of big advantages. We are very flexible in our approach with our partnerships. In our current partnerships, we have arrangements where our ownership interest is high and some where it's low. We don't have a cookie-cutter approach. Instead, we look at each market and each partnership differently and we believe that sets us apart from other companies in our field. Secondly, we are independent of other influences. We wake up every day and our only goal is to help our partners run their surgical facilities in a way that provides quality of care to our patients in a cost-efficient environment. We are laser focused on that, and being independent allows us to pursue these initiatives without other pressures. We are very proud of this and believe it's a significant advantage of partnering with Surgery Partners. n Headquartered in Brentwood, Tennessee, Surgery Partners is a leading healthcare services company with a differentiated outpatient delivery model focused on providing high quality, cost effective surgical solutions in support of both patients and physicians. Founded in 2004, Surgery Partners is one of the largest and fastest growing surgical services businesses in the country, with more than 180 locations in 30 states, including ambulatory surgery centers, surgical hospitals, multispecialty physician practices and urgent care facilities.

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