2017 Ambulatory Surgery Center Market Report

2017 Ambulatory Surgery Center Market Report

Market At-A-Glance
Revenues for ambulatory surgery center (ASC) services were $26 billion in 2016. Of the 6,150 facilities nationwide, 57% are independent/physician owned, 22% are corporate/for-profit, and 21% are hospital-owned/nonprofit. Corporate ASC companies are gaining traction in the market. From 2010 to 2015, the number of facilities owned by the top five companies increased 43%.

Cost Savings
Ambulatory surgery centers have much lower procedure costs compared to their largest competitors, hospital outpatient departments. For patients receiving outpatient surgical care, this could translate into savings of up to $5 billion annually. Some estimates place annual savings for Medicare and commercial payers at $18.7 billion and $12.4 billion respectively.

Quality Reporting Required For Full Reimbursement
In 2017, ASCs that fail to report on quality metrics could face Medicare reimbursement cuts of up to 2% of their overall Medicare revenues. The number of measures included in the reporting is expected to increase from 10 to 11 in 2018. However, for a number of measures, the incident rate (number of occurrences for each measure) has remained unchanged since the program was implemented. Rates of occurrence have been consistently low, at less than 1 per 1000 cases.

Certificate Of Need Laws Slow ASC Growth
To protect vulnerable hospitals from encroachment by ASCs, certificate of need laws were put into place to slow ASC expansion. Research shows that over a period of 27 years, these laws have been effective at restricting ASC growth.