Heather Hilgendorf-Cooley, administrator of Davenport, Iowa-based Spring Park Surgery Center, explains how CMS adding procedures to the ASC payable list and gathering more data from surgery centers will affect operations in the future.
Ms. Hilgendorf-Cooley will speak at the Becker's ASC 25th Annual Meeting: The Business and Operations of ASCs, October 18-20, 2018 in Chicago. Click here to learn more and register.
Question: What is the biggest issue your ASC is facing today? What strategy are you using to overcome it?
Heather Hilgendorf-Cooley: Now with more procedures being added to the ASC payable list, we will need to not only sustain our current volume, but have the ability to take on an increasing population. Realizing this case volume, we are currently in the process of adding two additional ORs to our ASC, with a target completion date of May 1, 2019.
Q: How is value-based care affecting your ASC or your plans for the future?
HHC: Our ASC has been built around the notion of providing quality care at a low cost. Our ASC, like many other ASCs, have fewer complications, infections and errors. In addition, our ASC is largely owned by our physicians, so the buy-in to value-based care has been evident since the inception of our ASC in the late 1980s.
Q: Over the next two to three years, what is the biggest opportunity for growth of your ASC?
HHC: The expansion of contract negotiations [is our biggest growth opportunity]. With an increase in a variety of performance and quality reporting that Medicare will mandate, the greater the opportunity will be for "open"dialogue with payers. For years, payers have been aware the costs associated with a procedure are much lower in an ASC verses hospital; now with the shift of procedures to ASCs and mandated reporting, ASCs will have an opportunity to be rewarded with perhaps better reimbursement.