Jayehs Dayal, MD, an anesthesiologist and owner of White flint Surgery Center in Rockville, Md., was one of the first physicians to own a freestanding licensed, accredited, three-room ASC in Rockwell.
The surgery center opened in 1998, and now Dr. Dayal is opening a new location to expand. The new location will have more procedure rooms while maintaining the two operating rooms afforded by their certificate of need. The new surgery center will also include an office-based lab, which Dr. Dayal recommends to all surgery center owners.
"There's a huge misconception in the medical community about peripheral arterial disease and while the technologies are getting very advanced, the literature hasn't kept up with the new technologies and new results so people still use old guidelines and old thought processes [on it]," dr. Dayal said on a recent episode of the "Becker's Healthcare Podcast." "Even the nomenclature is so outdated that it doesn't make any sense. It's a very untapped sort of new business line that we've discovered."
Dr. Dayal said Medicare pays "adequately" for procedures in the OBL, further adding to the viability of procedures performed there. Adding the cardiac and vascular procedures at an OBL can help support independent physician practices to maintain economic autonomy as consolidation in the field and strength of payers makes it difficult for small surgery centers to survive, and thrive.
"That's your only chance of making money these days and being independent and running your own affairs," said Dr. Dayal. "That's what I'm really excited about."