MESSAGE FROM THE CEO
ASCA Promotes Dialogue on Affordable, Accessible Outpatient Surgery
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n late September in Washington, DC, ASCA hosted an Evolution of Outpatient Surgery Summit that brought together leaders in outpatient surgery that included
payers, policy experts, data analysts and ASC physicians and staff. The meeting gave attendees an opportunity to work together to look for ways to reduce the cost of outpatient surgery while continuing to offer the highest levels of patient safety, patient satisfaction and quality of care. As ASCA President Terry Bohlke recognized during his opening remarks, the summit marked the first time that ASCA has convened a multi-disciplinary group of this kind at the national level. While the meeting focused on encouraging conversation and facilitating the
exchange of ideas, presentations made throughout the day provided thought-pro- voking content for the discussions that followed. US Representative Frank Pallone (D-NJ), for example, talked frankly about the perceptions of ASCs and hospitals that members of Congress hold and the ways that those viewpoints are affecting the role of ASCs in the US health care system. John McInnes, MD, director of the Division of Outpatient Care at the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services discussed some of the hurdles that ASCs encounter in adding codes to the list of procedures that Medicare will reimburse ASCs for providing to its beneficiaries. Other presentations included
case studies on spine procedures and hip and knee surgeries that are recently being performed in the ASC setting for the first time;
an overview of the steps that the ASC community has taken to measure quality, safety and patient satisfaction;
measures of quality and safety that could enable the migration of more complex cases to the ASC setting;
consumer education related to patient intake and postoperative care; and
Download your free 2015 quality reporting tip sheet at
www.ascassociation.org/ 2015QualityReportingRequirements.
Seeking Authors
ASC Focus is seeking the contribution of articles by guest authors. If you have the expertise and time to write for us, we’d be interested in hearing from you. Please see our editorial guidelines at
www.ascassociation.org/Focus and submit your story proposal to
smukerji@ascassociation.org.
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evolving payment methodologies that could enable the migration of additional kinds of cases to the ASC setting. When you consider how the participants in the summit interacted and worked
together to look at innovative ways that ASCs can demonstrate and improve qual- ity, this meeting was very successful. Building on that success, ASCA has already begun looking at conducting future meetings that will explore ways to make out- patient surgery more affordable and more accessible for patients of all ages, not
just for Medicare beneficiaries.
Bill Prentice Chief Executive Officer
ASC FOCUS NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2015
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