Hospitals are ramping up investment in orthopedic ambulatory surgery centers to capture growing demand for musculoskeletal care, lower costs and expand their footprint in outpatient surgery.
Orthopedic procedures — including joint replacements, spine surgeries and sports medicine cases — are among the fastest-shifting specialties to the outpatient setting.
The ASC market is projected to grow around 6% annually through 2030, driven by advances in minimally invasive techniques, improved anesthesia and payer pressure to migrate procedures outside hospitals.
Orthopedics also represents a significant financial opportunity.
Musculoskeletal conditions are a top driver of employer healthcare costs, and shifting high-volume orthopedic cases to ASCs is associated with lower costs and more same-day discharges, freeing hospital ORs for complex procedures while improving margins.
Physician leaders expect the shift of spine and orthopedic surgeries to ASCs will continue to accelerate, with some projecting 8% to 10% annual growth through 2030. However, they caution that economic and policy changes could affect the pace, Leslie Jebson, regional administrator at Greenville, S.C.-based Prisma Health, told Becker’s in August.
Site-neutral payment reform could accelerate the trend. Medicare typically reimburses ASCs at about 50% of hospital outpatient department rates for the same services, and policy shifts that close that gap would give systems stronger incentives to migrate more orthopedic cases to surgery centers.
Recent examples include U.S. Orthopaedic Partners and Mid State Orthopaedic & Sports Medicine Center breaking ground on a new ASC in Alexandria, La., and Louisiana Orthopaedic Specialists opening an ASC in Lafayette.
Both are designed to meet surging demand for same-day procedures and signal how health systems view orthopedic ASCs as pivotal to long-term growth in a shift toward outpatient-centric care.
