Michael Sheerin, CEO of NueHealth. Photo courtesy of NueHealth. NueHealth’s latest ambulatory surgery center (ASC) partnerships reflect a growth strategy with less emphasis on scale and more on preparing partners for value-based care.
Leawood, Kansas-based NueHealth has owned, developed and/or managed over 150 surgical facilities across 30 states since its founding in 1997.
Rather than acting solely as an operator or management vendor, though, the company pitches itself as a partner that can help ASCs manage full episodes of care, collect outcomes data and otherwise prepare for long-anticipated shifts beyond fee-for-service models.
“The episode-of-care paradigm is really managing the entire episode from preoperative, operative and post-operative care, and being accountable not only for the total cost, but for the outcome,” Michael Sheerin, NueHealth CEO, told ASC News.
Partnerships are not transactional
The idea of extending the ASC’s role beyond the day of surgery also underpins the structure of NueHealth’s relationships.
Examples include four recently announced management partnerships across Missouri and New Jersey that span a mix of minority-equity joint ventures and non-equity management arrangements.
This approach requires more than a transactional relationship, Sheerin said.
“They were really looking for a partnership, not a vendor,” he explained.
In practice, this means adapting NueHealth’s management role to each partner’s needs.
“There are certain parameters that other companies have to work with — a percentage of equity that they need to have in order to make the deal work,” Sheerin explained. “Some of that has to do with how they’re structured. If they are private-equity backed, then these balance sheets all roll up into one. … We don’t have that guardrail.”
The same philosophy extends to the technology side. NueHealth has spent years investing in technology that helps to track avoidable complications, readmissions and patient outcomes months after surgery, Sheerin said. Rather than pushing a single template, the company allows partners to opt-in selectively to these capabilities and services.
“Some choose not to take advantage of it at all. Others want all in,” he said.
The ASC’s role expands
Regardless of partner involvement in the platform, the underlying premise remains the same: As ASCs take on greater responsibility for outcomes, their operational model must expand accordingly, Sheerin said.
Using technology and data collection to remain connected to patients after surgery can head off avoidable costs, such as unnecessary emergency department visits, avoidable complications and overutilization of services.
As an example, he cited nurse navigation, which provides patients with real-time access to postoperative clinical guidance.
“It really helps to reduce unnecessary visits to an ER,” Sheerin said.
Sheerin also emphasized the importance of measuring more than just clinical performance. Traditional ASC metrics — such as complication or infection rates — do not tell the whole story, he said. Pairing this information with patient-reported outcomes (PROMs) offers a longer-term view of whether surgery actually improved function and quality of life.
“If you had your shoulder operated on and a year later you still couldn’t raise your arm, was that a successful surgery?” Sheerin said.
Sharpening the focus
NueHealth has been reassessing its growth strategy in the wake of exiting a large partnership in 2022.
“We have been going through a period of redefining what our objectives are,” Sheerin said.
The experience reinforced the core belief that there is no single right ownership or operating model for ambulatory surgery centers, Sherrin said. However, it also showed that alignment matters.
“There really isn’t a right or a wrong model,” Sheerin said. “What is important is to understand [a prospective partner’s] culture and what drives that mentality.”
Sheerin’s career path, which encompasses work as both a hospital administrator and in private practice, also shaped this view. Different physicians and organizations have very different appetites for risk, ownership and operational responsibility, he said.
For NueHealth, this has translated to less emphasis on adding centers and more on ensuring the right fit, Sheerin said.
Today, NueHealth manages about 20 centers, which Sheerin said is fewer than other national operators. However, he emphasized that this scale is intentional.
“We’ve never been in the business of building up the largest portfolio,” Sheerin said.
Orthopedics remains a core focus, driven by continued opportunities for site-of-service shifts, Sheerin said. He characterized cardiology as a longer-term opportunity requiring significant capital and regulatory readiness.
Geographically, the company is concentrating growth in markets where payers and providers show openness to value-based arrangements. Examples cited by Sheerin include Texas, Ohio, New Jersey, and the Midwest and Northeast more generally.
Measuring what matters
Looking ahead, Sheerin said NueHealth’s priorities extend beyond adding centers.
Asked about specific targets for 2026, Sheerin laid out a four-point scorecard for NueHealth’s success that goes beyond growth. Topping the list is the financial performance of the company’s partners.
“I want to see our partners do well economically,” he said.
This goal is inseparable from the second item on the list: outcomes. For NueHealth, quality is not just a compliance exercise, Sheerin said.
“We compare ourselves to national averages, and we want to continue to do better than the national averages,” he explained.
The third priority is deepening relationships with payers around value-based care, he said. These relationships depend on credible data, consistent reporting and a willingness to consider alternative payment structures.
Last but not least is continuing to develop technology and tools.
Overall, NueHealth aims to position itself for a future when ASCs will face more pressure to demonstrate value over time. ASCs that fail to embrace analytics risk being sidelined.
“Surgery centers are still a little bit of the wild west when it comes to collecting patient-reported outcomes, readmission rates and avoidable complications,” Sheerin said.
