Becker's ASC Review

12 EXECUTIVE BRIEFING 1 EXECUTIVE BRIEFING B uilding an Ambulatory Surgery Center (ASC) from the ground up means finding real estate, designing the facility, selecting equipment and much more. Becker's Healthcare recently spoke with Mark Bezjak, President of the Americas at Zimmer Biomet, to talk about the process and challenges in successfully building an ASC. Question: What are key considerations and challenges that leaders have to address when planning to build and successfully open an ASC? Mark Bezjak: Patient care is shifting away from the hospital, and that shift has only accelerated since the pandemic. When it comes to building an ASC, one critical component is financial planning. Whether you're an integrated delivery network, hospital system or physician group, how will you make the investments needed to purchase land, fund construction and buy capital equipment? Not only do you need to secure capital, but you also need to anticipate patient volume and what type of patients to serve in an efficient way. Another factor is real estate. Where in the community will your ASC serve your patients best? To understand this, conducting local market research will help you identify the right place. Are you considering owning the land or leasing? Will you go in on it alone? Will you create a partnership team or develop a joint venture with a healthcare system? Lastly, facility design. The overall schematic needs to be efficient to facilitate patient flow, technology integration, and reduced sterilization burden. For example, are you planning for a smart operating room? Do you want to use a ROSA® Robotic Knee replacement system? What capital equipment considerations do you need to get the ASC up and running? And, Sterile Processing Departments (SPDs) continue to be a bottleneck within ASCs. How can you be more efficient in delivering the products that are needed for surgery? Q: What led to the partnership between Zimmer Biomet and CBRE, and how do you foresee this collaboration benefiting the development of ASCs? MB: We are very excited about the collaboration. Zimmer Biomet is one of the world's largest musculoskeletal organizations — we're an implant company, a technology company and a data company. We think of our partnerships with physicians from end to end, which includes the total continuum of care. It's important for us to continue to build relationships with our physicians. We have conversations with physicians who say, "I want to open an ASC. How do I do it?" Building an ASC: Insights on challenges and best practices

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