The Michael E. DeBakey Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) Medical Center has become the country’s first VA medical center recognized by the American College of Surgeons’ (ACS) Quality Verification Program (QVP). The ACS QVP provides a standardized method for “establishing, measuring, and improving a hospital’s quality infrastructure across all surgical…
I’ve attended two excellent conferences over the last month (AORN and HSPA, to be specific) and it’s a refrain I heard time and again: More and more perioperative leaders are now paying out-of-pocket for conference travel and registration. That got our team thinking about taking a closer look at this…
Nonprofit health system Fairview Health Services and Atlas Healthcare Partners, which joins with nonprofit health systems and physicians to develop and operate ASCs, announced the formation of a new joint venture (JV) to develop and operate a network of ASCs across Minnesota and “surrounding regions.” The partners state that their JV…
Oregon health system Asante, which last year closed a community hospital citing financial difficulties, is seeking to “dodge state review” of a surgery center purchase, according to The Lund Report, which covers health news in Oregon and Washington. The outlet reports that Asante “quietly asked the state for permission to…
Matt Parr of the Private Equity Stakeholder Project, a nonprofit that researches the impact of private equity (PE) investment in health care and other essential services, last week published an op-ed in the Chicago Sun-Times that blames PE for “dismantling” three PE-owned Chicagoland hospitals, and calls for the state of…
University of Iowa (UI) Health Care has commemorated the one-year anniversary of the opening of its orthopedics-focused North Liberty, Iowa, campus. In addition to orthopedic care and surgical services, the facility also provides physical therapy and rehabilitation, an emergency department, a full-service pharmacy, diagnostic imaging, and lab services. Over its…
Advanced Spine and Pain (ASAP) has provided aerial footage and information regarding its soon-to-open 12,075-square-foot outpatient clinic and ASC in Phoenix. It says the new facility “marks the evolution of ASAP into a regional leader for a five-specialty care continuum.” Those five specialties are interventional pain care; orthopedic and spine…
The University of Pennsylvania’s Leonard Davis Institute (LDI) of Health Economics has posted a Q&A with one of the authors of a study that examines the ongoing shit of surgeries to the outpatient setting. The study, “Inpatient to Outpatient Shifts in Surgical Care: Persistence of COVID-19 Era Changes and Socioeconomic…
Arkansas news organization Talk Business & Politics (TB&P) reports that a group of state legislators, seeking to “better understand and address constituent concerns” about the future of Baptist Health’s Fort Smith hospital, met with Baptist Health leadership last week for a “listening session” to discuss the situation. State Rep. Ryan…
A general surgeon has posted an opinion piece in General Surgery News that focuses on how rising physician litigation is “reshaping American health care.” Kourtney Kemp, MD, FACS, a general surgeon with Minnesota physician group Specialists in General Surgery, writes, “Healthcare costs are rising, access is shrinking, clinical complexity is increasing,…
