Boston-based Shields Health Care Group is focusing on its core business of musculoskeletal cases in ASCs in the next year.
Andy Wilkinson, Shields' director of financial planning and analysis, ambulatory surgery, spoke with Becker's ASC Review on the system's ASC strategy.
Shields Health Care Group offers imaging and radiation therapy services at more than 30 facilities throughout New England.
Editor's note: This interview was edited lightly for clarity and brevity.
Question: How is your team eyeing growth in the next year?
Andy Wilkinson: As a multisite management company, Shields Health Care Group is committed to expanding our services at ASCs. We recognize they can maximize efficiency for our surgical partners while enabling our patients access to high-quality, affordable surgical services.
We're continuing to focus on our core business of musculoskeletal cases. We’ve been working with our surgeon partners to continue to complete total joint procedures and have even started total shoulders with our commercial population. We're also starting to engage in some referral-management programs that focus on high-quality, lower-cost care. These referral programs should help to bolster growth in our core musculoskeletal business as self-insured companies start to look for ways to reduce their health benefit expenses.
We're also focusing on some emerging services. All of our sites have started spine programs this year, and we're continuing to see significant interest from both orthopedic-spine and neuro-spine providers in moving to a freestanding ASC.