When Premier Outpatient Surgery Center outgrew its original facility in Colton, Calif., President Ben Childers, MD, and his partners faced a predicament familiar to independent practices nationwide as they looked to expand their facilities at a time of high rental and real estate costs.
Premier had roughly five or six years left on its lease at the original site — the first Premier Outpatient Surgery Center location, built about 20 years ago — when the building’s owner sold it to a local school district, Dr. Childers said. Renovating wasn’t appealing either, leaving them to look for a new site altogether.
“We thought about upgrading it and everything, but we didn’t want to spend millions of dollars on upgrading HVAC system and all this kind of stuff,” Dr. Childers told Becker’s. “So we, partnering with Amsurg, decided to build a new facility.”
Premier has operated out of its new building for about three years. The facility now has six operating rooms, up from a smaller original footprint, and was designed with room to expand into total joint replacement — a service line the old building, with its outdated processing facilities, couldn’t support.
“We wanted to move to total joints, and the facility that we were in really just wasn’t up to speed,” Dr. Childers said.
The build took about a year, Dr. Childers said. Financing it was where the center’s partnership with Amsurg mattered most.
“Our partnership with Amsurg was helpful because Amsurg helped with our initial construction loan,” Dr. Childers said. “They fronted the money to do the construction, and we have since rolled our loan over into a formal financing.”
Amsurg also offered ASC-specific expertise that improved the overall facility design and construction process, Dr. Childers noted.
“AmSurg has built a lot of centers like that,” he said. “For us to have done that on our own, I think that would have been difficult.”
Premier’s board reflects the partnership structure that made the project possible: two seats held by AmSurg and two by the physician limited partnership.
The new facility has coincided with growth in Premier’s physician base. Two additional plastic surgeons have joined since the move, Dr. Childers said, and one of the center’s partners, the chief of orthopedics at Loma Linda (Calif.) University, has brought several of his colleagues to operate there as well.
Turnaround has been a selling point for surgeons coming from hospital settings, according to Dr. Childers.
The center has since been named one of the nation’s best ASCs by U.S. News & World Report and, this year, picked up a Reputation 800 award, according to Dr. Childers.
For physician groups facing similar pressures, such as aging facilities, rising costs or capital they don’t have on hand, Dr. Childers said the calculus isn’t complicated.
“I think partnering with a company like Amsurg — who is one of the leaders in the industry — is probably the best way to go,” Dr. Childers said. “I just don’t think the private equity guys… they got all the money, they put it up, but they don’t have the back end. You’re going to lose part of your investment and you’re still going to be running it all by yourself.”
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.