The first time Elizabeth “Betsy” Dovec, MD, FACS, FASMBS, DBOM, performed a laparoscopic sleeve gastrectomy in an ambulatory surgery center setting...

Last year was another grind for leaders of outpatient surgery centers....

Most new ASCs are opening their doors with an electronic health record (EHR) system in place, and estimates suggest somewhere between 20% to 50% of existing freestanding...

From major reimbursement changes to existential threats to procedures that are moving to outpatient facilities (robotics, complex spine and GYN cases), here’s what...

When Benjamin M. Mauck, MD, was fatally gunned down in a Collierville, Tenn., exam room in July, allegedly by a troubled patient, the Memphis-area community lost...

One way to understand the current landscape of office-based surgery is to think back to a time when both patients and payers were unsure about what ASCs could do....

The ambulatory surgery market continues to grow, despite economic and business challenges that may limit the growth but not stop it from happening in the coming year and beyond. In a recent...

What has changed is the steady growth in awareness among patients and payers about surgery centers and the reliable patient care and positive outcomes they deliver. What hasn’t changed, unfortunately, is the need for...

The relationship between opioid use during and after surgery and the opioid addiction crisis is a complex one. While ineffective pain management can make recovery a nightmare, there’s a real risk for many patients when it comes to opioid addiction....

The $1.7 trillion federal spending package passed by the lame-duck Congress last month includes a 2% reduction in physicians’ pay for Medicare cases, which experts in the same-day surgical industry say will have multiple immediate negative...

Major change doesn’t happen overnight — especially in the world of surgery. Little by little the trends of today mold and shape the industry of tomorrow. For facility leaders, keeping up with these changes is an absolute imperative....

Hard work has always been part of the price to pay for working in surgery, but perhaps never to the level that it is now. “We were already experiencing a high burnout rate...

The movement of gynecology cases to same-day surgical spaces is being driven by physicians who want to perform procedures on carefully selected patients in comfortable and safe environments, according to...

Interventional radiology (IR) is slowly finding its way into ASCs. IR physicians perform a wide variety of “pinhole surgeries” — minimally invasive procedures that leverage catheters, wires, needles and sheaths — using image guidance...

Megan Muñoz is finishing up nursing school at Chamberlain University outside of Chicago. She just completed her clinical rotation and will graduate with her BSN in September. Unlike many nursing students, however, Ms. Muñoz is ready to...

When Woodrow Moore needed a balloon angioplasty and single stent implant, he chose to have the procedures performed at the Texas Ambulatory Surgery Center in Katy. Fixes like these...

Denise Kesler, RN, retired from her role as the director of the Athens (Ga.) Orthopedic Clinic ASC last month. She’s seen the surgery center evolve from a fledging facility...

The extraordinary measures nurses took to combat COVID-19 has taken their toll on the profession and continue to worsen the ongoing crisis for the nursing workforce....

Two years ago last month, the coronavirus began to spread across the country. The virulent strain, which most of us had never heard of before it quickly became part of...

It’s been a little over a year since Penn Medicine in Philadelphia opened its Interventional Support Center (ISC), one of the largest instrument reprocessing facilities...