Many expressed interest in the recent news from Empire BlueCross BlueShield announcing a policy effectively shifting surgery from costly hospitals to ambulatory surgery centers (ASCs) in NY. I wanted to share this figure to help further the conversation: $5,400,000
$5,400,000 represents the approx amount of money commercial and gov health insurance payers saved JUST from Gramercy Surgery Center, Inc.’s Manhattan facility alone in 2020 solely because surgery was performed at our in-network ASC as opposed to a hospital outpatient dept. This was during a year when case volume dropped significantly, so savings could be much higher during a normal year. (I calculated this figure assuming in-network ASC facility payments are about 60% of what hospitals would be paid though some stats have that figure as low as 50%)
Hospital surgical costs are ballooning the overall healthcare costs for payers, patients, and taxpayers. But this is the part of the equation that puzzles most people: one assumes that cost savings also comes with a sacrifice in quality but ASCs actually produce better clinical outcomes (with lower re-admissions rates), have safer environments (with much fewer infections than hospitals), and cost ~40% less…for the same exact procedure! Thoughts? #valuebasedhealthcare
