A prevalent issue in healthcare for several years has been increased strain on physicians, hospitals and other healthcare workers — and ASCs may be the solution.
Becker's connected with Beth LaBouyer, RN, executive director at the California Ambulatory Surgery Association, to discuss multipronged benefits ASCs offer to hospitals.
Editor's note: This response has been edited lightly for length and clarity.
Question: What are some key ways ASCs can alleviate the burden on hospitals, particularly in terms of patient volume, resource allocation and specialized care delivery?
Beth LaBouyer: There is still a high volume of ASC-eligible cases that are being handled in hospitals unnecessarily — those need to be shifted to ASCs. Because ASCs focus on certain surgery types, they can structure scheduling in a way that optimizes time in the operating rooms and reduces turnover time between surgeries. This allows more cases to be done more quickly, which reduces patient wait times and alleviates the burden on hospitals. In particular, there is an important opportunity to address outdated policy limitations in California that restrict cardiology procedures. Already, CMS has approved 23 cardiac catheterization and percutaneous coronary intervention procedures to be payable in the ASC setting — and these are being performed safely in ASCs across the country.
In fact, a recent study by ECG of claims data from 2022 and 2023 suggests approximately 10% of CATH and PCI procedures are being performed in the ASC setting. But California law must be updated to allow these procedures to be done in California ASCs.
That is important because of three factors:
- Demand. The demand for cardiac care in the U.S. continues to rise as more patients are screened and treated for cardiovascular disease.
- Timeliness of care. Research shows that the length of time between initial patient outreach to a cardiologist to the time of a patient’s CATH or PCI procedure in California can be as long as five months.
- Cost savings. The cost of these procedures are 36-47% lower in an ASC when compared to the hospital outpatient department Medicare rate, and it is expected that the cost savings is even greater for commercial payers.
As more cases are safely migrated to ASCs, there will be increased opportunities for cost savings and greater access to care.