If you haven't yet heard the news, last month AORN acquired Outpatient Surgery Magazine, a merger that in some ways resembles an acute care hospital buying an ambulatory surgical center that it paid little mind to when the ASC first opened.

Not many people noticed when Outpatient Surgery launched in 2000. On a shoestring budget, a skeleton staff laboring in a cramped attic over a law office cranked out the very first issue. There was no guarantee there would be a second, but the timing turned out to be impeccable. Ambulatory surgery had just surpassed the inpatient variety as the most common type of procedure done. There were just under 3,000 surgery centers, but that number would more than double over the next decade as surgeons left hospitals in droves to build their own efficient surgical factories.

"The idea was to create a sort of community center for the people who lead surgical facilities," says OSM founder and publisher Stan Herrin, "and to help them talk with one another about how to do outpatient surgery more successfully, more safely and more profitably."

In no time, surgeons were performing increasingly complex procedures in their facilities, thanks to minimally invasive surgical techniques and ad-vances in pain control. Stripped of surgery, their most profitable service line, hospitals lobbied long and hard against the disruptive element that was physician-owned, for-profit ASCs, but the field was changing and growing rapidly.

Most important of all, patients loved the convenience of same-day surgery — like dry cleaning, in by 9, out by noon — and payers loved the cost.

And our readers loved the magazine, in large part because they didn't feel all alone in performing their incredibly difficult jobs and because each issue brought solutions to the problems they were facing. We quickly became a popular, dependable tool for keeping up.

Just like the renegade surgeons who started the movement, we were bold, brash and a little belligerent, published by a privately-held company outside of Philadelphia many were surprised to learn only had a 15-person staff.

Still, AORN was the undisputed king of the hill, the biggest cat in the jungle, the 68-year-old association that defines the practice of perioperative nursing with its evidence-based guidelines and its colossal conference that for thousands of OR nurses is a sacred pilgrimage they must make every year.

But last month, we received an honor we never saw coming. AORN invited us to join the family. Of course we said "yes." We are honored and thrilled to have AORN's resources, reputation and vision behind us, and delighted by the opportunity to continue to serve the surgery community for decades to come.

So now our 15 employees join AORN's 140 to form a powerhouse with unmatched reach and influence. But unless you look closely at next issue's masthead, you likely won't notice that AORN has taken us in. Besides the bookkeeping and the new benefits, we'll hardly notice either.

Taking the hospital-ASC analogy one step further: Just as a hospital wants the ASC it acquired to keep doing what it's been doing, AORN wants us to carry on with our mission to provide surgical facility leaders with relevant, practical, how-to content that reads like a couple of colleagues having a conversation over coffee about how they might improve their turnover times. And that is just what we plan to do.

Our currency is the community we've created. It's our deep connection with our 27,000 readers and our trusted relationships with our advertisers. AORN's acquisition is a testament to how valuable you are and to how incredibly popular ambulatory surgery is.

It's not going anywhere.

And neither are we. OSM