Cardiac catheterization labs have been gaining steam as an outpatient venture, as more cardiovascular procedures migrate to the ASC setting.
Cardiac catheterization labs allow cardiologists to perform minimally invasive heart and vascular procedures to diagnose and treat cardiac and peripheral vascular diseases. According to a recent blog post by Ascendient, a healthcare consulting firm, cardiac catheterizations are used more than 1 million times per year in the diagnosis and treatment of cardiovascular disease.
"Today, appropriate outpatient diagnostic and interventional cardiac cath procedures are increasingly being performed in [ASCs] across the country, especially in states without [certficate-of-need] regulations," reads the Ascendient post. "A number of [certificate-of-need] states in the southeastern U.S. have been generally more cautious, with the pace of cardiac ASC approvals picking up in just the past two years."
Even in CON-restricted states, cardiac catheterization labs are gaining momentum. In Virginia, for example, Richmond-based Virginia Cardiovascular Specialists recently opened the state's first freestanding, Medicare-certified outpatient cardiac catheterization lab.
VCS opened the catheterization lab to accommodate the growth it was already seeing at its existing ASC — which has only continued with the introduction of the new facility.
"And already we're realizing just in terms of how we're going to try to run both those services at the same time — of both types of procedures at the same time — that we're already outgrowing our space," John Onufer, MD, a cardiologist and medical director of VCS, told Becker's. "We expect that more procedures will become supported by the payers to be done in outpatient settings."
In 2024, Marriottsville, Md.-based Bon Secours and Compass Surgical Partners also partnered to build a cardiovascular surgery center in Short Pump, Va., and received CON approval in the same cycle as VCS.
RWJ Barnabas Health, based in West Orange, N.J., also a CON state, published a blog post Jan. 6 highlighting its new cardiac catheterization lab after receiving approval from the state board of health to perform elective angioplasty procedures in 2022. The lab is a unit at the Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital Hamilton (N.J.), an RWJBarnanas facility.