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In ASCs, a Lobby Proves Critical

A few pages from now you will stumble across an article I wrote describing how I upgraded my surgery center, essentially by abandoning one and starting from scratch on another. It was a tough decision to close down the one I built in 1984, because it was small and paid for. Que sera.

It's interesting to look back on the climate when I built my first ASC. We weren't sure how to do it or whether it was wise. The hospital industry was aggressively hostile and regulatory battles were legend.

I took my dad, a progressive but a wee bit skeptical anesthesiologist, to an Outpatient Ophthalmic Surgery Society (OOSS) meeting in San Diego in the early 1980s to see if this was something we wanted to do. Back then, the novelty and rapid growth of the ASC industry mandated a stand-alone meeting, and boy, was it jammed. The lectures and the exhibit floor were packed.

OOSS gave its members a little booklet filled with floor plans of dozens of existing ASCs. I remember studying centers that fit in 500 square feet; others that used curtains to separate one OR into several so the equipment could be shared — and even one with a pass-through opening to swing a microscope arm between two rooms while the base remained fixed. A few years later, OOSS developed the Quality Assurance program that my facility still uses today.

OOSS is perhaps best known for its lobbying efforts on behalf of ASCs and the ophthalmologists who use them, including most recently, vitreoretinal surgeons. Adequate facility reimbursement makes it possible to afford the systems and equipment we need to do our work, so all of us, owners and users, are in this together.

A Must-Attend Meeting

I always attend the half-day symposium OOSS puts on each year at the ASCRS meeting, but this year I am also looking forward to its first stand-alone meeting in years, scheduled for October 6-7 in Chicago. It might be the first one they've had since the meeting I took my dad to more than 20 years ago, but perhaps there were others that I can't remember.

As I get older, I find myself attending fewer meetings rather than more, but I'm going to go to this one. Thanks to my new facility I have, for the first time in many years, big bills to pay, so I need to learn how to make that as painless as possible, and to support their efforts to keep us profitable.