The Ambulatory Surgery Center Association (ASCA) is the only national membership organization committed to providing all ASCs with the resources they need to compete in today’s complicated health care marketplace. Consider these benefits that ASCA members enjoy.
Networking: ASCA members have multiple live and online opportunities to interact throughout the year. ASCA’s members-only online networking community, ASCA Connect, gives members an opportunity to get answers to their questions in real time from more than 16,000 of their colleagues from around the country.
Staff professional development and education: At ASCA’s in-person meetings and seminars, ASCA members have direct access to experienced ASC professionals who can help them improve their business operations and patient care. In addition, ASCA provides webinars throughout the year on topics that are essential to operations in ASCs. ASCA has also released an ASC-specific regulatory training series that can help ASC professionals earn continuing education credits for under $3 per credit. Finally, ASCA distributes two e-newsletters each week—one exclusively to its members—to keep members of the ASC community up to date on trends, best practices, industry updates and federal and state legislative and regulatory developments.
Benchmarking: ASCA’s web-based clinical and operational benchmarking tool helps ASCs evaluate their performance and quality of care with data captured from approximately 1,000 ASCs each quarter. In 2015, ASCs could also participate for the first time in the association’s new, entirely online ASC Salary and Benefits Survey. This redesigned survey attracted nearly 850 participants in its first year and will be conducted again in 2017.
Advocacy: As the only voice representing ASCs of every specialty in Washington, DC, ASCA works on multiple fronts each day to improve the operating environment for your ASC. This year, the association succeeded in securing passage of House and Senate versions of legislation that would protect physicians practicing in ASCs from meaningful use penalties in the Medicare program. ASCA staff are continuing to work for final adoption of that legislation before year-end. Also this year, after ASCs reported significant challenges in submitting web-based data reports to Medicare’s Ambulatory Surgical Center Quality Reporting (ASCQR) Program, ASCA successfully advocated for an extension of the reporting deadline. Those are just two examples of the ways ASCA’s advocacy efforts protect and promote ASCs. There are easily hundreds of other ways that ASCA’s daily outreach and advocacy efforts support ASCs.
In 2016, ASCA membership is more important than ever. Together, ASCs and ASCA are setting the standard in outpatient surgical care and creating a better experience for patients. Make sure that you and your ASC are involved.For membership information and details on all of the products and services that ASCA provides, contact ASCA at 703.836.8808 or asca@ascassociation.org.