NueHealth’s latest expansion isn’t about entering new markets, it’s about finding partners prepared for healthcare’s next phase.
The Leawood, Kan.-based ASC company announced four new partnerships across Missouri and New Jersey on Jan. 21, adding Hackensack (N.J.) Musculoskeletal Surgery Center, St. Joseph (Mo.) Center for Outpatient Surgery, The Surgical Center at Columbia (Mo.) Orthopaedic Group and Surgery Center of the Northland in Platte City, Mo., to its portfolio.
Founder and Chair Dan Tasset told Becker’s the deals weren’t driven by scale for scale’s sake. Instead, they reflect a selective strategy — partnering with providers in markets where value-based care is gaining real traction, and where the shift away from fee-for-service is “no longer theoretical.”
“What makes those markets attractive for us is the ecosystem there, meaning the payers and the providers have this movement towards where I think value-based care is no longer theoretical,” Mr. Tasset said. “Clearly, there’s tailwinds moving towards value-based care. I think the market’s clearly moving in that direction, and we have a very specific definition for value-based care, and these particular markets seem to be embracing where I believe the market inevitably is going to be going.”
That lens — whether a market and its providers truly “buy into the fact that value-based care is no longer theoretical” — guides NueHealth’s strategy more than geography or volume.
“Value, in the simplest sense, is really just clinical quality plus patient satisfaction divided by cost,” Mr. Tasset said. “I am absolutely convinced that it’s coming at lightning speed, that providers — surgeons themselves — and the surgery centers are going to have to compete on value.”
The four partnerships also highlight NueHealth’s structural flexibility, another pillar of its strategy.
Hackensack Musculoskeletal Surgery Center entered a minority-equity joint venture with NueHealth, while St. Joseph Center for Outpatient Surgery opted for a non-equity management arrangement. Other centers fall somewhere along that spectrum, including one de novo, reflecting different competitive environments, ownership preferences and levels of market maturity.
NueHealth’s willingness to support both equity and non-equity models gives it room to operate in markets with varying levels of competition, and to partner with organizations that have different appetites for financial risk.
“I’d prefer partnerships with those that really believe they’re going to have to compete, whether it’s a health system, a surgery center, an orthopedic group, a multispecialty group,” Mr. Tasset said. “Those are the ones that I feel like we’ve got the best alignment with.”
Mr. Tasset framed that alignment as more than philosophical, it’s operational.
What ultimately differentiates NueHealth’s approach, Mr. Tasset said, is its insistence that ASCs must be built to compete on value.
“Most ASC companies, particularly, I don’t think they even know how value-based care translates into the operations of an ASC, and how that ASC is an extension of the physician practice,” he said.
Mr. Tasset has long argued that healthcare’s payment evolution follows a predictable path: from fee-for-service to shared savings, to prospective bundles and eventually to guarantees.
“I’ve been saying now for over five years that this journey — how healthcare is consumed and paid for — goes from fee-for-service to shared savings to prospective bundles, but ultimately it ends up with a guarantee,” he said.
However, guarantees often require “the ability to underwrite that risk,” he said, something many ASCs aren’t positioned to do. That’s where NueHealth sees a competitive advantage, and where Mr. Tasset argues the industry still confuses “having an EHR” with being ready to compete on value.
“You can’t ultimately guarantee your product unless you can underwrite it — underwrite that risk,” Mr. Tasset said. “You can’t underwrite that risk without the data to underwrite it, and you can’t collect the data without the technology to collect it. And the typical, traditional PMRs today don’t even come close to enabling you to collect the data so you can underwrite that risk.”
Even robust documentation doesn’t necessarily equal readiness, he added. Paper tracking is “far away” from an EMR, but modern EMRs can still be “so far away from what needs to be done to guarantee your product.”
NueHealth’s technology and business intelligence layer, Mr. Tasset said, is designed to provide real-time visibility into quality, outcomes and cost drivers, which are critical when cost is the denominator in the value equation.
“It’s real-time visibility into what the quality of care and clinical outcomes look like — complications, cost drivers — because cost is the denominator in the value equation,” he said. “Our technology and business intelligence layer brings that cost-driver information. It gives us the ability for constant improvement, and meaningful real-time reporting to those paying for healthcare — commercial payers, self-funded employers.”
In some cases, he said, that means tracking metrics others aren’t measuring at all.
“We’re measuring things that other people don’t even think about,” Mr. Tasset said.
At its core, NueHealth’s latest deals signal a bet that ASCs and surgeons will soon need to compete on more than convenience and efficiency, and that the winners will be those built to prove value.
