A physician in Collinsville, Ill., admitted to illegally prescribing an anti-anxiety drug, the U.S. Justice Department said June 7. 

Mississippi emergency room physician Kevin Crandell, MD, was sentenced to 33 months in prison and nearly $1 million in restitution, the Daily Journal said June 7.

Below are five ASC acquisitions, affiliations and partnerships that Becker's has covered since May 3:

A Dansville, N.Y.-based physician has agreed to pay $602,662.61 to resolve allegations that he billed CMS for procedures that were never performed, WETM reported June 7. 

Sixty-five percent of providers used temporary physicians to allow for the continual treatment of patients, according to AMN Healthcare's "2022 Survey of Locum Tenens."

A hacker stole data from ASC and imaging group Shields Health Care, jeopardizing the personal information of 2 million people across 56 practices and facilities in New England.

An Iowa physician who has been deemed a high risk to the public said a state licensing board has used a "phony" competency evaluation to discipline him, the Globe Gazette reported June 5.  

The American Medical Association endorsed 10 ways to reform the Medicare physician payment system, in a June 3 website post. 

ASC success boils down to CMS policy and cost management, according to Sandy Berreth, RN, administrator at Foothill Surgery Center in Santa Barbara, Calif. Below, she discusses those factors surgery centers can control and those they can't.

U.S. inflation, which recently hit a 40-year apex of 8.5 percent, is expected to cool later this year and into 2023, the Congressional Budget Office said recently, according to the Wall Street Journal.

Young physicians are entering the job field with three employment options: owner, employee or partner, the American Medical Association laid out in a June 2 post. 

The American College of Surgeons held a June 2 press conference to discuss the gun violence crisis, less than a day after a spine patient shot and killed his surgeon and three others in a Tulsa, Okla., building that housed an ASC.

A Newton, Mass.-based physician agreed to pay $100,000 to settle allegations that he improperly prescribed schedule II, IV and V controlled substances, the U.S. Justice Department said June 1. 

San Francisco-based Chinese Hospital received $7 million to expand outpatient surgery services and renovate infrastructure at the hospital's six-story outpatient building, San Francisco Business Journal reported June 1.

Idaho is the best state to practice medicine in 2022, according to Medscape's rankings released May 20, and they earn an average of $178,301 annually there, according to data from ZipRecruiter.

Vail (Colo.) Health's robotic surgery tool, Da Vinci, has resulted in a decrease in complications, quicker recovery and fewer opioid prescriptions following its December 2021 implementations, reported local news source Summit Daily May 31.

During a pandemic, such as COVID-19, Americans are more likely to pursue surgery if they are vaccinated, the hospital staff is vaccinated, the surgery is urgent, and the surgery is conducted in an outpatient setting, a study published in Vaccine found. 

Eighty-eight percent of healthcare facilities used temporary physicians or other temporary providers in the last year, according to AMN Healthcare's "2022 Survey of Locum Tenens."

ASC leaders spoke with Becker's ASC Review on key topics in May, from the outlook for independent ASCs to the financial effects of current payer trends.

Independent ASCs have an edge in the market as procedures increasingly migrate to the outpatient setting, according to Doug Geinzer, founder and president of Las Vegas-based High Performance Providers.