recovery centers where patients can have 48 hours to recover from the
time of admission at the ASC. ASCs must be safely in operation for 2
years before applying to offer overnight services and have a transfer
agreement with a local hospital for emergency patient care.
No matter state law or what creative workarounds can be imagined,
most outpatient centers are still years away from being able to handle
overnight stays. The buildout alone would be prohibitive.
"This is not transformative," says Bill Prentice, CEO of the
Ambulatory Surgery Center Association. "This provides another option
for a patient needing outpatient surgery by giving the surgery center
and the surgeons an additional option to make sure that they are truly
stabilized and ready to go home."
But others see the arrival of extended stays as potentially eliminat-
ing a barrier to growth that will let ASCs eventually move into other
surgeries like spines. "The next frontier for innovation is spine cases,"
says an ASC CEO. "As we talk to spine surgeons in the community
about doing cases, they would love the opportunity to have an
overnight observation stay or a 2-night stay for many of their cases. I
think if we had that a lot spine cases can move to the outpatient set-
ting."
Mr. Prentice, too, concedes that over time more states might choose
to follow examples like Oregon's. "I think the need for this could grow
as policy makers become more and more comfortable with the great
care that's being provided in surgery centers. It gives those states who
choose this an additional option in terms of ensuring that patients can
be seen in surgery center, even those who may require a little extra
time to recover from a procedure."
OSM
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