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outpatient rates could leave them weak and vulnerable. It also fails to
take into consideration the fact that hospitals have an unfunded man-
date to care for the indigent and the poor, but that's another story for
another month.
"Our rates are too low as they are," says Chris Holden, president,
chief executive officer and director of AmSurg. "Dragging others
down to our level is not going to solve the problem."
Rather than drag HOPDs down to where ASCs are, ASCA's Bill
Prentice says he'd like to see the rates meet someplace in the mid-
dle. But that could backfire. It's not a stretch to say that equalized
reimbursement rates could endanger physician ownership.
We know margins are narrow and competition is fierce nowadays, but
the answer's not to pay hospitals less and ASCs more. Surgery centers
must compensate for the reimbursement inequity with the same low-
cost, high-volume model that's worked well for decades. If the ASC
industry is going to compete with hospitals on cost, it's a battle that they
must lose — and lose convincingly — at all costs. OSM
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