Dallas-based United Surgical Partners International reported same-facility systemwide growth in the first quarter of 2022, despite cases being canceled due to the omicron variant and intense efforts to integrate newly acquired ASCs from SurgCenter Development.
"USPI has increased its portfolio by roughly 50 percent in the last 18 months," said Saum Sutaria, MD, CEO of Tenet Healthcare, USPI's parent company, as transcribed by Seeking Alpha. "Integration of our newly acquired SCD and Compass facilities are on track, and these centers are performing well. Physicians' receptivity to our buy offers has been very good, and additionally, the progress under our new partnership and new center development agreement with SCD is ahead of our expectations."
The company added six new facilities in the first quarter and have 20 other new ASCs under construction or in syndication. Since acquiring SurgCenter Development late last year for $2.1 billion, USPI is the nation's largest ASC chain, with about 430 centers.
"USPI continues to deliver strong growth and provide high quality clinical care to our patients," said Dan Cancelmi, Tenet's CFO. "In the quarter, USPI produced a strong 8 percent increase in surgical cases compared to last year, demonstrating continuing volume recovery from the pandemic, particularly orthopedic and GI cases, and their volumes improved as we moved through the quarter."
The company reported surgical cases recovered from the pandemic and reached 2019 levels in the first quarter.
"We were pleased to see both emergent and elective surgeries, and mostly elective surgeries in the USPI environment, continue to grow and improve each month in the environment," said Dr. Sutaria. "We feel good about the way we're exiting the quarter. I'm particularly pleased at how rapidly USPI recovered in their surgical case volume. I'd say it's been the fastest of prior-COVID surges in terms of the ability to really recover those cases and continue to move."