Becker's ASC Review

15 ASC MANAGEMENT HCA Midwest opens $9.3M Missouri ASC By Claire Wallace H CA Midwest has completed construction on a $9.3 million ASC in Kansas City, Mo., according to an April 17 report from the Kansas City Business Journal. Work on the 22,500-square-foot Blue River Surgery Center began in 2023 and wrapped up in early April. It will provide orthopedic, gastroenterology, vascular, general surgery and podiatry services. The center will open with 12 employees, including operational and clinical staff. Eventually, the ASC hopes to grow to 40 employees and 28 affiliated physicians. It will fully open at the end of May, according to the report. It includes five operating rooms and two specialty procedure rooms. HCA Midwest currently has seven ASCs across the Kansas City area. It is working on additional ASC projects in the area, including an 18,800-square-foot facility on Lee's Summit Medical Center campus. HCA is also collaborating with the Research College of Nursing on a $34.5 million project that will expand space and nursing student capacity. The new school building, which will be adjacent to HCA Midwest's Research Medical Center, is anticipated to open in late 2024. HCA Midwest is part of Nashville, Tenn.-based HCA Healthcare. n Optum workers report layoffs: What ASCs need to know By Patsy Newitt Former employees of Optum, parent company of ASC chain SCA Health, have reported on social media that the company is conducting layoffs. Here are five things to know: 1. A registered nurse case manager, senior director and integration manager are a few of the roles that have reportedly been eliminated, according to LinkedIn posts. 2. Optum declined to provide more information. Becker's could not confirm an exact number or range of the allegedly terminated employees, nor when the layoffs occurred. 3. Optum also conducted layoffs in August. e company laid off around 67 employees from the Everett Clinic and the Polyclinic in Seattle, and Optum-owned, Morgantown, W.Va.-based MedExpress Urgent Care eliminated registered nursing positions at 150 facilities. 4. As the largest employer of physicians, Optum added nearly 20,000 physicians, inked deals with three physician groups and three hospitals and earned $226.6 billion in total revenue in 2023. 5. Optum is recovering from the Feb. 21 Change Healthcare cyberattack that disrupted operations for healthcare organizations nationwide. e company has allegedly reinstated 80% of the functionality for its claims, payment and pharmacy services. n Why independent physicians could have more power than employed counterparts: Viewpoint By Patsy Newitt As physicians migrate to employed models, many are concerned that private practice physicians are losing their power. Vladimir Sinkov, MD, a surgeon at Las Vegas-based Sinkov Spine, joined Becker's to discuss why he feels private practice physicians have more power than employed physicians. Editor's note: is response was edited lightly for clarity and length. Dr. Vladimir Sinkov: Private practice physicians have more power in healthcare than their employed counterparts. Private practice physicians at least have some control over what insurance contracts they sign, where they practice, which hospitals they chose to go to operate or admit patients and what schedule they have. Employed physicians frequently relinquish those decisions to their administrators. All physicians, however, have been gradually giving up their power to control the healthcare system. e main reasons for that include a lack of understanding of the financial aspects of the current healthcare system and the resulting unreasonable fear of financial loss as well as desire to 'just practice medicine' instead of getting involved in policy decisions. e rest of the healthcare entities (federal and state governments, health insurance companies, hospital systems) exploit these 'weaknesses' and continue to assert more and more control over the physicians — the actual providers of healthcare. n

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