11
ASC
MANAGEMENT
The nursing
landscape: 11
statistics making
ASC execs nervous
By Laura Dyrda
R
ecruiting and retaining great nursing staff are
challenges for many surgery centers and hospi-
tals across the U.S.
In some communities, ASCs struggle to compete
with hospitals offering huge bonuses and pay hikes
during the pandemic. Administrators tout the ASC
work schedules — no nights or weekends — as a
perk, and can be more flexible with part-time work to
attract talented nurses.
Here are eight notes on the current
nursing landscape.
1. e average hourly wage for full-time registered
nurses is $40. Part-time RNs earn $42 per hour on
average, according to Medscape.
2. Salaried RNs earn $91,000 per year on average,
while hourly RNs report average annual compensa-
tion of $78,000, according to Medscape.
3. e average income for RNs at hospital-based
outpatient facilities is $83,000, compared to $76,000
at a nonhospital-based medical office, accord-
ing to Medscape.
4. In the first nine months of 2021, annual nurse
salary without bonuses grew 4 percent to $81,376,
according to Premier healthcare consultants and
reported in e Wall Street Journal.
5. Fiy-five percent of RNs don't think they are fairly
compensated, according to Medscape.
6. Nurse turnover rates are about 22 percent in 2021,
up from 18 percent in 2019, according to Premier.
7. More than 50,000 RNs are expected to retire in
2022, according to the American Nurses Association.
8. e U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics projects the
U.S. will need 1.1 million new RNs to meet the needs
of Americans. n
What to consider when
assessing fair market
value of an ASC
By Patsy Newitt
A
SCs must charge a fair market value for equity in an ASC, which
can be difficult for a newer facility to calculate, Krieg DeVault, a
lawyer from Meritas, wrote in a Nov. 12 Lexology article.
Here are five things to know about equity investment:
1. A newly formed entity with no facility, no license and no payer
contracts should be valued at significantly less than an ASC with even
a short operating history.
2. Mr. DeVault recommends obtaining a formal valuation from an in-
dependent third-party valuation firm with specific experience valuing
ASCs to avoid violating anti-kickback rules.
3. Some ASCs just pick an equity price that they find meaningful, Mr.
Devault said. But if a competing facility charges something distinctly
different, he wrote, it could trigger a government investigation.
4. A below-fair-market-value arrangement sometimes forms out of
habit or because of a concern that newer physicians may not be able
to afford the buy-in.
5. When a physician retires or stops using an ASC, there are no longer
referrals from that physician back to the ASC, and so no kickback viola-
tions can occur. n
Colorado ASC to get 70% of
hospital's orthopedic surgeries
in partnership
By Patsy Newitt
A
spen (Colo.) Valley Hospital is moving 70 percent of its ortho-
pedic cases to a new Steadman Clinic ASC, hospital officials
told the Aspen Times in a Nov. 25 report.
The cases will be performed at the Steadman Philippon Surgery Cen-
ter in Basalt, Colo., which features four operating rooms, a procedure
room, a biologics lab, nine preoperative and postoperative rooms, and
14 recovery rooms.
Vail, Colo.-based Steadman Clinic, Gainesville, Fla.-based Orthopedic
Care Partners and Aspen Valley Hospital began a partnership in De-
cember 2020 to expand orthopedic services in the area.
The partnership increased the hospital's surgical volume and helped
bolster cash reserves, allowing Aspen Valley to offer staff raises
after freezing wages in 2020 due to the pandemic, according to the
Aspen Times. n
