As healthcare reimbursement policies continue to shift, hospitals are re-thinking how to deliver the best quality care while improving the bottom line. In a reversal from previous practices, they have begun to convert hospital outpatient departments (HOPD) to ambulatory surgery centers (ASC) in order to reap the advantages associated with HOPD to ASC conversion.
The full story on this trend in outlined in our white paper, “HOPD to ASC Conversion: Now or Later with Transition to Value-Based Care,” available here. In this blog, we outline the three steps necessary to realize the strategic benefits of converting an HOPD to an ASC.
- Assess what the HOPD is trying to accomplish short-term and long-term and how that fits their overall value-based care strategy.
“The two hardest parts of HOPD to ASC conversions for hospitals are, number one, coming to the realization that they need to give up some traditional advantages in the short-term for the longer-term viability of the ASC model,” says Thomas Crossen, Chief Development Officer at Regent Surgical Health. “And the next hardest part is getting all parties aligned in a deal.”
Stat: ASCs perform more than 7 million procedures annually for Medicare beneficiaries.
- Develop a target list of physicians to syndicate ownership that will achieve volume and quality care goals.
“We are very accustomed to the conversation between a hospital and physicians, which is easily the most dynamic piece of this entire puzzle,” Crossen says. “It requires spending a lot of time with the physicians to help them trust in the value of the deal and speaking with the hospital, so they fully understand the impact of the conversion.”
Stat: More than $2.3 billion in savings are generated each year when patients receive certain preventive and surgical procedures at ASCs instead of HOPDs.
- Identify disruptive tactics to enhance care such as robotics and higher acuity joint replacement or spine care.
Want to learn more about HOPD to ASC conversion? Click here to read the full white paper, or contact us directly to speak with our team.
