Surgery Partners released Q3 earnings this week. On the news of their earnings and revenue beat, the stock jumped 14%. On the earnings call, CEO Eric Evans attributed some of their success to growth in MSK.
With 17 de novo facilities currently in development, they expect to open 10 more in the next 18 months. These new sites' main focus is centered around MSK.
He specifically called out a focal point to the higher acuity MSK cases like TJRs. Over the last year, they have seen a 60% increase in this procedure alone. The growth in MSK and changing sites of care is driving the continued ASC boom.
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One thing I’m thinking about:
In a past life, I helped health systems choose where to build next.
They paid big dollars to determine where the next access point went – which makes sense if you’re deploying $6B in real estate capital.
Our secret sauce was no surprise. Data.
We’d ingest claims and consumer data to find the epicenter of life and health activity. Where some health systems just picked sites near Starbucks or Target, the real capital allocators wanted to go deeper.
This got me thinking.
With a shift to an employer-centric growth strategy, how might that impact where a group builds its next office, ASC, or clinic?
Here’s a rudimentary visual of how this could look for the Nashville market. The heatmap represents major employers across Middle Tennessee. My next step would be to overlay current orthopedic sites of care to see where there are potential "care deserts" ripe for a new location.
Of course downtown has a lot of employers but it also has a lot of providers. What surprised me was the pockets east of the city, near Donelson. I never knew there were large employer pockets there...
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One conversation starter:
The long-awaited 2024 physician fee schedule was released this week. Physicians will receive a 3.4% cut in their Medicare reimbursement (and commercial payors are sure to follow).
This shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone, as it was discussed ad nauseam in the industry media but that doesn't make the sting any less real.
Payment has declined by 26% from 2001-2023 when adjusted for inflation, while practice costs have increased by 47% over the same time period, according to Jason Marino, director of Congressional affairs for the AMA.
Here’s my question:
What strategies is your orthopedic organization planning to implement to address the financial pressures created by the new Medicare physician fee schedule?
I’d like to curate and circulate them to the broader group.
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