Regent Surgical Health's recent partnerships with TowerBrook Capital and Ascension Capital show the company's growing commitment to ASCs.
Regent's vice president of operations, Alexandra Reyes, BSN, RN, and vice president of development, Scott Bergman, joined "Becker's Spine & Orthopedics Podcast" to talk about the company's strategy with case migration.
Here is an excerpt from the podcast. Click here to download the full episode.
Question: How is your organization seeing and reacting to the shift in cases from hospitals to surgery centers?
Scott Bergman: Regent is extremely bullish on the ASC industry. Right now, we're obviously seeing a significant shift in migration of cases that were traditionally in the hospital setting moving to the outpatient setting. There are two factors that are driving this shift:
1. Higher-acuity care such as total joint replacements are being added to the ASC-approved procedure list, so we're seeing more cases being approved to be done by CMS in ASCs.
2. Insurance carriers are starting to demand that these outpatient cases be migrated out of the hospital setting into the ASC.
We also recently completed a partnership with TowerBrook Capital and Ascension Capital, which confirms our belief and commitment to the future of outpatient surgery. This investment allows us to increase our resources that will ultimately benefit both our current and future ASC partners.
Q: How much are hospitals focused on outpatient surgery as part of the strategy?
SB: We're really starting to see the hospitals focus more on outpatient strategy. They've been a little bit behind the curve, and I think they're finally starting to realize that the cases are going to be migrated out of their hospitals. Now the time has come where they can either align themselves with the physicians and partner with them on outpatient surgery centers, or sit back and wait and just have those cases leave.
We're really seeing the hospitals understand that developing an ASC strategy and partnering with a professional management company like Regent and their physicians makes the most sense in the long run for these hospital systems.