A new white paper provides a comprehensive guide for hospitals looking to drive a successful value-based care strategy by expanding their ambulatory care platforms. As a leading manager and developer of ambulatory surgery centers (ASCs), Regent Surgical Health is helping hospitals realize the opportunities presented by robust ambulatory care platforms to lower costs, improve the quality of care, enhance patient loyalty, and improve physician satisfaction.
“The fact that healthcare premiums have continued to rise is proof that payers have not been successful at managing care,” says Chris Bishop, Chief Executive Officer at Regent. “Shifting the risk to hospitals and providers aligns incentives with the quality and efficiency of care, not the volume of procedures, and presents a growth opportunity for hospitals who embrace the strategy.”
The Regent white paper suggests that one of the biggest benefits hospital systems can accrue from expanding their ambulatory care footprint is a lower cost of care. As hospital systems and providers assume reimbursement risk from payers and begin to leverage their expertise to manage care more efficiently, collaboration is taking over in an ambulatory care arena where friction once existed. The new white paper provides evidence that hospital/physician joint-ventures improve the cost-saving benefits of moving more surgeries to outpatient centers.
“We help hospitals develop a market strategy to more cost-effectively manage their surgical spend,” Bishop says. “There’s no question that the way to do it is to move appropriate surgeries out of the hospital setting and into a surgery center. It often can be done for less than half the cost, and it’s a more convenient, high quality experience for the patient with less risk of infection and readmission.”
The white paper asserts that expanding ambulatory care platforms also can help hospitals build brand loyalty by improving relationships directly with patients and with the physicians who open doors to new patients. By improving a hospital’s alignment with physicians in the community, a robust ambulatory care platform helps hospital systems optimize both effectiveness and efficiency, while providing convenient access to services and elevating the quality of care.
Offering specific steps for ambulatory strategy market assessment, the new white paper also features the insights and experience of a number of successful ASC and hospital leaders.
“Regent Surgical Health has been the conduit for bringing together the hospital and physicians,” says Dr. Paul Imber, ENT, board chair of Glasgow Medical Center LLC, an ASC affiliated with Christiana Care Health System in the northeastern U.S. “We’re all working together in a unified way. I believe our patients will be the beneficiaries of this partnership, continuing to receive the high level of customer service they’re grown accustomed to at Glasgow. And now, we are well-positioned to deliver a higher level of care at a lower cost.”
Click here to download a free copy of the new white paper, titled “Ambulatory Care Platforms: A Key Driver of Successful Value-Based Care Strategy.”