Even prior to the pandemic, clinicians were already performing a higher number of certain procedures that traditionally took place in hospitals at ASCs and OBLs. These include diagnostic catheterizations, percutaneous coronary interventions and rhythm management.

These spaces were designed initially to move certain lower-acuity procedures from higher-acuity hospital inpatient and outpatient settings to environments where operating room procedures could be performed in less time and at less cost for payers. A 2014 report from the Office of Inspector General showed that moving operations to ASCs and reimbursing them at rates lower than hospitals saved Medicare and its beneficiaries billions of dollars.


Massachusetts General Brigham recently planned to open three ASCs in Boston, but squashed its plans after the Massachusetts Department of Public Health did not endorse the project. It did so because competitors, insurers and community groups alleged that the facilities would divert patients away from other more affordable hospitals and cause healthcare costs to increase.

In a 2020 op-ed for HCB News, David Pacitti, president and head of Americas at Siemens Healthineers, said that ASCs and OBLs have additional perks that have increased their use. “Since emergent, high-complexity cases can’t disrupt scheduling, pacemaker patients don’t spend hours in the waiting area while physicians treat newly arrived heart attack patients. Even the patient’s long walk from a hospital’s sprawling parking area to its front door is eliminated, reducing patient anxiety. Because patients no longer need to navigate a multistory hospital building or multiacre medical campus, they are less likely to be late for appointments. Finally, patients may find comfort in the idea of having their procedure performed at a site that isn’t also treating COVID-19 patients.”

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