ASCs have become widely accepted as safe and efficient lower-cost settings for a growing list of surgical procedures. As the industry continues to grow, facility design and architectural innovation are becoming key in keeping up with patient expectations and a growing demand for outpatient surgery.
On the design side, that shift is already showing up in how new centers are built, Brian Krump, AIA, principal and director at BWBR, a commercial architecture firm, wrote in a July 20 article in Building Design + Construction.
He noted that many ASCs are adopting a hospitality-inspired approach to the patient experience — warm waiting areas, dedicated family zones, fireplaces, cafés or refreshment stations, and access to outdoor space and natural daylight. Patients, he said, are increasingly choosing ASCs not just for cost and convenience, but for the overall experience.
That same push toward reinvention extends to how these centers operate. Because ASCs typically have a smaller footprint than hospitals, Mr. Krump said, every square foot has to work harder: layouts need intuitive wayfinding, separate paths for patient check-in, discharge, staff and services, and enough flexibility across pre-op, operating rooms and recovery to keep patients moving without unnecessary transfers between rooms. Operating rooms, in particular, are being built to flex between specialties, integrate minimally invasive tools and digital imaging, and scale as new equipment and procedures move into the outpatient setting.
Dan Tasset, founder and CEO of Leawood, Kan.-based NueHealth, sees that same pressure from the operator’s side. He recently told Becker’s that facility design is now inseparable from the industry’s shift toward value-based, risk-bearing care.
Mr. Tasset, who led NueHealth from 1997 to 2021 before returning to the CEO role this year, believes the future of healthcare will be defined by a formula: clinical quality plus patient satisfaction, divided by cost. Surgical care, he said, is going to lead that transformation — and the buildings ASCs operate out of have to keep pace with it.
“You cannot build tomorrow’s ASC with yesterday’s design,” Mr. Tasset said. “You can’t build it with yesterday’s technology. You can’t build it with yesterday’s data infrastructure. Those were built for the past, and they were built in a time when we didn’t even begin to contemplate what’s possible with value-based care.”
That means designing around a different case mix than the one ASCs were originally built for, he said.
“It requires a whole new design of surgery centers designed around hyper-specialty, around higher-acuity cases, evolving case mix, technology integration, all of those patient expectations,” Mr. Tasset said. “A lot of things we learned through COVID, what we could do.”
Mr. Tasset doesn’t think every existing ASC will make that transition. Centers that aren’t built to support more complex procedures and the data infrastructure needed to underwrite financial risk on those procedures, he said, will struggle to stay relevant as payers and health systems push more volume toward accountable, lower-cost sites of care.
“There’s a whole bunch of ASCs that are no longer relevant,” he said. “I don’t think they can compete in the new world. So I’m excited to build a whole new set of surgery centers that are built around the future of delivery, and we’ve already started designing those. In fact, we’ve already started to open those, and they’re pretty amazing.”
One example he pointed to is Surgery Center of the Northland, a NueHealth-partnered facility in Platte City, Mo., in the Kansas City area.
“It’s built to support more complex procedures, technology and operational infrastructure to do true value-based care, true substantial downside risk,” Mr. Tasset said.
At the Becker’s 32nd Annual Meeting: The Business and Operations of ASCs, taking place October 29-31 in Chicago, ASC leaders, surgeons and healthcare executives will explore strategies to drive growth, enhance operational performance, navigate reimbursement challenges and prepare for the future of ambulatory surgery. Apply for complimentary registration now.
