
Last month, the Ambulatory Surgery Center Association (ASCA) President Mark Wainner was invited to the White House to participate in a summit focused on improving patient and workforce safety across the U.S. health care system.
The event included senior health care officials, leaders of 22 national health care organizations, including ASCA, and representatives from 16 major hospital systems.
It marked a first-of-its-kind meeting at the White House, providing ASCA the opportunity to engage in high-level policy discussions, Wainner said on the ASCA podcast.
“I think the White House realizes that they need assistance from organizations that work closely with providers to make progress,” he said. “It’s going to take collaboration between the public and private sectors in order to make progress on this issue. They need the providers to weigh in and participate and help come up with solutions.”
The meeting took place as the industry is bracing for significant regulatory and legislative changes that could reshape business operations and patient care.
ASCs are preparing for new mandatory quality reporting requirements under Medicare’s Ambulatory Surgical Center Quality Reporting (ASCQR) Program. Beginning in 2025, ASCs must conduct the Outpatient and Ambulatory Surgery Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems (OAS CAHPS) survey to avoid Medicare reimbursement cuts.
Additionally, proposed legislation such as the Primary Care and Health Workforce Expansion Act could have major implications for ASCs, particularly with its plan to eliminate facility fees for certain hospital outpatient services.
At the summit, the focus was on patient care and preventable incidents, like infections, patient falls, and other avoidable scenarios, which still happen too frequently, Wainner said.
Workforce well-being was another topic.
“There’s concerns about the workforce in general,” Wainner said. “Are our employees and the workforce being taken care of, and listened to? If an employee is not doing well mentally, then they’re more prone to make mistakes.”
Additionally, there were discussions on health equity and ensuring equal access to care, alongside patient safety and infection control.
Those conversations are happening in the industry more broadly, as well.
A recent study by Humana Healthcare Research and Harvard University found that senior-focused primary care can play a critical role in reducing racial and socio-economic health disparities.
And ASCs have a role to play in addressing health disparities too; senior-focused care, which often includes coordinated care teams and same-day appointments, can lead to earlier interventions, which in some cases can be tackled in the outpatient setting.
“There was discussion around health equity in the United States,” Wainner said. “So what can we do to ensure everyone gets care equally?”
There is a growing movement in the ASC industry to measure safety and quality metrics.
Wainner said leaders at the summit encouraged operators to collect those metrics.
“[The summit] was a great opportunity to hear where we’re obviously a lot of work to be done and why we need to collaborate to improve patient safety and workforce safety in a number of different other areas,” Wainner said.