As the ASC market continues to evolve, some specialties have flourished, while others remained stagnant.
For a specialty to not only survive, but thrive in the current ASC landscape, it must be able to seamlessly make the shift to outpatient procedures.
Giving patients the option to have a procedure performed in an ASC rather than at a hospital has been the key to helping certain specialties grow. An example of this is cardiology, the fastest-growing ASC specialty, according to Avanza's "2022 Key ASC Benchmarks and Industry Figures" report.
"If you follow the money, you'll see some of those [specialties] thriving," Prashanth Bala, vice president of ASC operations at Shields Health Care Group in Quincy, Mass., said. "At the same time, the types of procedures that no longer need to be done in the hospital are probably what's thriving the most. You see muscular and skeletal continue to thrive, so orthopedics. I think you're seeing a really large growth in plastic surgery more recently in the last two years. Cardiology seems to be growing too. Procedures that don't need to be performed in a hospital or operating room anymore can be moved to an outpatient setting."
While some specialties are growing in the wake of the shift to outpatient, others continue to struggle under the thumb of the pandemic, but not because of COVID-19 itself. Masking has protected the population from certain illnesses, which has aided people's health and hindered the growth of the ear, nose and throat specialty.
"I think clinically what we're seeing that's really struggling is ear, nose and throat," Mr. Bala said. "Especially from the pediatrics perspective, I think after about a year and a half, almost two years of wearing a mask, a number of children just haven't gotten sick. They haven't gone to see the doctor to see if they need ear tubes or they haven't gotten sinus-related symptoms as a result of being able to wear a mask and not catch germs. ENT has been a really hard specialty for us to see growth in, but I think we're going to start to see some of that rebound here in the near future."
As the demand for outpatient care increases, specialties that can make the shift from inpatient to outpatient will have greater opportunities for growth.