As the population ages and certificate-of-need laws decrease, Philip Blair, CEO of Surgery Center Services of America, is seeing a lot of opportunity for ASC growth.
Mr. Blair spoke with Becker's about his ASC company's biggest growth targets.
Editor's note: This response was edited lightly for length and clarity.
Question: Where are you looking at ASC growth?
Philip Blair: We have an aging population. People are retiring and the snowbirds are coming to basically the Southern half of the United States — Arizona, Texas, Florida, etc. We're always doing a lot of projects in those three big states. So you have that portion — there's the people who are retiring in general that need healthcare and that's where they're located. They're all going to places that are warm.
Another main driver is certificate-of-need laws are starting to get relaxed. So in a lot of states like Tennessee and North Carolina and Alabama and New York, their CON laws have been so restrictive and finally governments have figured out that they've got to give them access to healthcare. Hospitals have done a great job of lobbying the state legislatures and getting laws implemented that make it extremely difficult or extremely expensive and time consuming to even go through the CON process. We're now getting a batch of physicians now who are realizing they have an opportunity now to go into a surgery center.