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forward slash beckerspodcast.
This is Gracelyn Keller with the Becker's Healthcare
Podcast, and we're recording live at the thirty
first annual business and operations of ASCs.
I'm currently joined by doctor Michael Redler who
is an orthopedic surgeon at Connecticut Orthopaedics.
Thanks for joining me today. To have us
kick off, can you please share a little
bit more about yourself and your work in
the ASC space? Sure. Grace, always great to
see you. You do a fabulous job. I'm
Michael Redler. I'm an orthopedic surgeon at Kinetic
Orthopedics.
I specialize in sports medicine, upper extremity surgery.
I am the medical director of the surgery
center of Fearful County, so that ambulatory center.
I do teach, medical students from, Frank Netter
School of Medicine at Quinnipiac University and also
the Yale School of Medicine. They're PA students,
and I also do a lot of medical
mission work in Honduras with One World Surgery.
Wonderful. Well, thanks for being here. And let's
start our conversation talking about the ASC market.
In The US, this is projected to reach
$60,800,000,000
by 2030 and continues to experience strong year
over year growth. So from your perspective, what
is the most significant trend in market forces
driving this expansion, and how should ASC leaders
be preparing today?
So ASCs have become more mainstream. And part
of the reason that they're gonna be a
high quality, lower cost alternative, we all know
this. This is not anything that is new.
But what is new is our ability to
do more and more high acuity cases at
these surgical centers.
It offers patients the convenience of recovering at
home. It offers a lower cost for the
insurance company, and with skyrocketing
health care costs. This is just a natural
segue.
Absolutely.
And from AI robotic surgeries to advanced EHR
systems,
technology remains both a make or break factor
and a critical driver of ASC operations at
scale. So how do you see deeper tech
integration shaping the way ASCs deliver care and
manage their business over the next few years?
So at this meeting at Becker's health care
meeting right now, AI has been the hot
topic. I suspect it's probably a hot topic
no matter where you go, and it's penetrating
further and further into the health care market
to create greater levels of efficiency.
So that's a technology that's important. Frankly, the
other technology that's really important is the advanced
techniques that we now have for greater patient
comfort. And those greater patient comfort options will
allow for those higher acuity cases to be
done, patients to be comfortable. And I would
suspect
and suggest
that that technology is almost as important as
the AI right now. Absolutely.
And then with 60% of health systems considering
ASC joint ventures and many ASCs already partnering
with systems in their communities,
what opportunities do you see for collaboration, whether
that's with other providers or vendors, to strengthen
patient care and operational efficiency? So I think
they're seeing in every market, including in ours,
we now our center partners with Hartford HealthCare.
And it's interesting. There's a lot of health
care systems out there. Hartford HealthCare actually delivered
what they said they were going to. They
improved the rates for the ambulatory surgical center.
They offloaded some of their lower acuity cases
from the hospital to the surgical center.
They took some of their employed physicians and
allowed them to do cases there,
and they benefit from a great place for
patients to do surgery. So it became a
win win situation.
And doctor Redler, is there anything else we
didn't touch on or any final thoughts you'd
like to share as we wrap the conversation?
You know, I think, Grace, that what I
said before is important. To me, one of
the biggest drivers that allows us to do
these cases at the surgical center was patient
comfort. And no matter what you do with
the pyramid of importance, the patient is always
gonna be at the peak of the pyramid.
And with
new technologies
coming out, there is a bupivacaine
insert for total knees that Olay is coming
out. There is gait science where they're neuromodulation
in conjunction with nerve blocks. We can do
longer cases. We can bridge that therapeutic gap,
and this is gonna be of great benefit
to patients. And
that'll allow us to do more cases at
center. It's a win win situation once again.
Awesome. Well, thank you so much for joining
me today on the Becker's Healthcare Podcast. Again,
we are recording live at the thirty first
annual business and operations of ASCs.
Grace. Always great to see you. You do
a fabulous job. Thank you.