In one two-week stretch last month, our team of editors did what we do far too seldom: spend time in the company of our readers. The four of us left the headlines and deadlines behind and hit the road, going from sterile halls to lecture halls to exhibit halls to medicated Halls (for the colds we caught).

Associate Editor Stephanie Wasek and I kicked off our tour with a visit to the Limestone Medical Center ASC, a multi-specialty, physician-owned facility in Wilmington, Del., noteworthy for more than being the first state's first ASC. Limestone is the only surgery center we know of that's tucked inside a physician's office building. In addition to placing outpatient surgery and a doctor's office visit under the same roof, the medical center houses lab and X-ray services, as well as a walk-in urgent care unit. A pretty ingenious setup, this "supermarket for outpatient care," as no-nonsense Nurse Manager Kay Beaudett, RN, calls it.

Stephanie then scooted down I-95 to Baltimore to attend the American College of Gastroenterology meeting. The next day in Philadelphia, Production Editor Kristin Royer and I hit the MGMA's Ambulatory Surgery Management Society's preconference.

I spent the next four days at the American Society of Anesthesiologists (ASA) meeting in San Francisco, where there was no shortage of physician-staffing companies (we counted 15 in the exhibit hall) promising a cure for the anesthesia-provider shortage. Senior Associate Editor Bill Meltzer covered the content-rich Society for Ambulatory Anesthesia (SAMBA) meeting that preceded ASA. After two days back in the office to reply to voicemail and e-mail, it was off to Chicago for Scott Becker's 10th annual Ambulatory Surgery Centers Conference, a standing-room-only affair that keeps getting bigger and better. Kristin capped our whirlwind tour by making the rounds at the American College of Surgeons Congress in Chicago.

Next to SpellCheck and Starbucks, few things help us editors do our jobs better than spending time with the nurses, surgeons, anesthetists, business professionals, consultants and vendors who are on the frontlines of outpatient surgery. From them, we get the ideas and the inspiration - and the occasional insult - we need to produce a magazine that's on target, in touch and in tune. In short, they help us connect the dots.

Now that the road trip is over and it's back to headlines and deadlines, we're left energized, excited and a bit overwhelmed by all there is to share with you, our reader and our reason for being. You'll have to excuse us now. We have expense reports to file. Business cards, binders and notebooks to flip through. And an issue to produce.