Raleigh, N.C.-based Compass Surgical Partners’ new CEO, Mark Langston, told Becker’s the company’s next chapter will be defined by “disciplined” expansion through scaling joint ventures with health systems, deepening physician alignment and building denser ASC networks across geographies.
Compass’ “high growth” strategy centers on three levers: expanding existing facilities by recruiting additional physicians, adding facilities through health system joint ventures — including partnering with existing ASCs and developing de novos — and bringing on new health system partners, according to Mr. Langston.
“High growth is our focus,” Mr. Langston said, describing the approach as both expansion and optimization, in which added scale feeds back into the platform. As Compass grows, he said, it can generate stronger economies of scale and “bring those economies of scale back to our existing partnerships,” framing growth as a rising-tide dynamic for health systems and physicians.
For 2026 specifically, Mr. Langston emphasized what he called “disciplined growth,” starting with geography selection and a clear value proposition rather than dealmaking for its own sake.
“We don’t want to do a joint venture just to do a joint venture,” he said. “We want to figure out where and how we can add value to our health system partners. Together, we build a strong value proposition, and that joint value proposition allows us to unlock value inside that geography — partnering with physicians in their existing facilities and building new facilities.”
That strategy begins with market fundamentals. Mr. Langston said the company is largely following population density and hospital capacity constraints. Markets where hospital ORs are full and experiencing capacity pressure are likely to present the biggest openings for ASC growth, he said.
From there, Compass narrows its focus.
“We look for the right ingredients, and those ingredients eventually point to a couple of potential systems,” he said. “We meet with those systems and figure out who we can build the strongest value proposition with. At the end of the day, that’s who’s going to win when we go out to create a strategy to build a dense ASC network across a defined geographic area.”
Technology investment is another pillar of Compass’ growth plan, with an emphasis on developing “homegrown solutions” rather than relying solely on off-the-shelf platforms. The industry often runs on “what happened last month and last quarter,” he said, but Compass is trying to push decision-making toward what leaders can change now using real-time visibility.
Mr. Langston also sees Compass’ independence as a differentiator when partnering with health systems, saying it allows the company to build a strategy “100% dedicated” to that partner without concerns about conflicting interests in a market. He said ASC growth requires straightforward execution.
“The hardest thing to do is make strategy simple, digestible, and executable — and that’s our role, because that’s how it gets done,” he said. “The more complicated you make a strategy, the harder it is to execute, and generally it doesn’t work. People get frustrated with each other.”
Those conversations are also being shaped by external pressure, including site neutrality.
“Every payer is focused on it,” he said. “Medicare is doing away with the approved procedure list over the next three years. Everything is moving in that direction. If a system is going to get paid much lower for doing procedures inside a higher-cost setting — and hospitals are higher-cost settings because they have more bricks, more overhead — you can’t change the bricks and mortar and the cost structure you have in place today.”
