Ambulatory surgery centers (ASCs) remain central to HCA Healthcare’s (NYSE: HCA) long-term outpatient expansion strategy, despite the company’s heavier focus on urgent care, physician clinics and freestanding emergency departments in recent years.
“We think about ambulatory surgery centers as just part of our approach to the marketplace,” CEO Sam Hazen said during a March 4 investor call. “Unlike some other companies, we don’t typically own surgery centers or other outpatient facilities outside of our core markets.”
HCA Healthcare ended 2024 with outpatient surgery cases down 1.3%. Nashville, Tennessee-based HCA operates 188 hospitals and about 2,400 ambulatory sites of care, including ASCs, urgent care centers and more.
HCA follows a market-based strategy, where each region features multiple hospitals at its core, surrounded by a network of outpatient facilities, Hazen said.
“When I think about the last five years, and when I think about kind of a bridge to our long-term goal of continuing to invest in our networks, the biggest growth over the last five years were in really three components of our network strategy,” Hazen said. “The first ones were physician clinics. The second was urgent care centers that have seen a nice growth over the last five years. And the third will be freestanding emergency rooms.”
Going forward, HCA will be concentrating on 43 core markets, hoping to capture more patient volume by ensuring ASCs and other ambulatory sites of care are strategically placed near existing inpatient facilities, making it easier to coordinate care.
“[Surgery centers are] a good asset to fit within your network,” Hazen said. “It offers a price point difference, and it gives a good physician alignment tool. Our surgery centers are syndicated with our physicians, and it plays that role for us in our markets.”
More broadly, Hazen said that it is still too early to determine the full impact of potential policy changes from the Trump administration.
However, he said that HCA is preparing to mitigate any challenges.
“We have really strong operational capabilities, and we’re able to operate at scale,” he said. “That gives us the ability to really try to navigate challenges when they occur, and we’re gearing up in case we have to do that.”
