US News & World Report has chosen to carry out procedures outside of hospitals, which means that more people have released the second ranking of the country’s outpatient surgery centres.
US News released its rankings today. Media outlets released their first list of the best outpatient surgery centres last year. This was announced after compiling the rankings of top hospitals in America for over 30 years.
The organization investigated 4,357 outpatient surgery centers in four specialties. Ophthalmology; Orthopedics and Spinal; and Urology. US News performed the analysis in collaboration with CareJourney by Arcadia.
US News ranked 733 outpatient surgery centers, or around 17% of those surveyed, as the nation’s best performers.
In its rankings, US News looked into data on patient outcomes.
“We are primarily considering emergency department visits that occur 30 days after the initial procedure is completed,” Wen tells Chief Healthcare Executive®. “We are considering hospitalizations for inpatients. We are considering fatal things. We are considering the length of staying in an acute facility, such as a nursing home.”
The analysis examines patients using Medicare, and Wen said he hopes that some facilities will ultimately include individuals who use commercial insurance and Medicare Advantage plans. Wen says in the future, US news hopes to expand its analysis to a wider range of patients.
According to Wen, he provided a fair assessment of the surgical center performance, symbolizing the history of patients and other risk factors.
At the upper surgical centers, fewer patients generally suffer from complications. Top-ranked facilities by US news have 35% fewer emergency department visits than typical surgical centers.
The best surgical centers with orthopedic and spinal surgery had a complication rate of about 37% lower than other facilities. In ophthalmological procedures, top performers had 54% lower complication rates than other surgical centers, US News said.
Consumers use the US news rankings for outpatient surgery centers, but Wen says he was surprised by the level of interest from the providers.
“I think the first goal we had was to meet the need for consumers to look at these quality metrics in ASCS,” Wen says. “And we were delighted that ASC operators, those who own and manage ASCS, also met similar needs, because they had previously said they were not satisfied with ASC’s existing quality metrics.”
“And the ratings we are creating and reporting allow them to see more detailed performances of ASCs and see more longitudinal trends, and therefore they can see gaps and opportunities they can address to improve performance,” she says. “That is something we are grateful for, but it wasn’t necessarily coming, meaning we were subjected to constructive criticism.
Many providers have shown consistency, but Wen says he was a little surprised by the next performance fluctuations from one year.
“I think the ASC industry looks much more unstable than hospitals. I think it’s just a nature, because some of these are private and operational. Wen says. “I think there have been more changes than we had expected, especially as we’ve been working in hospitals for a long time.”
Some surgical centers add or drop procedures that may change the ranking. She also states that many outpatient surgery centers are simply new and unlike some hospitals, they have not existed for more than a century.
Most of the surgical centers surveyed by US News have average ratings and should provide some comfort for consumers, Wen says.
“I think that’s encouraging because it essentially means there’s no red flag for the safety and quality of these places,” Wen says. “And most of the ASCs are rated as averages, so for patients, I think that means that wherever you are, there’s a high chance that you’ll meet your needs in your area and that we can assess it as safe.”
In the future, US News hopes to add more specialized care services to its analysis of heart disease and other such, Wen says. She said the analysis will become more refined and that US News had learned some lessons from its first year. US news chose not to evaluate surgical centers that only offer lower back pain injections, as complexity and risk are not comparable to facilities that perform surgeries such as lower back pain.
“We’re always trying to improve our methodology,” Wen says. “It’s our second year and I’m sure we’ll get a lot of great feedback.”
The healthcare system continues to see significant demand for outpatient services, analysts say.
These states had the most outpatient surgery centers in these states, as ranked in US news.
California (95)
Florida (64)
Texas (54)
Pennsylvania (36)
Maryland (34)
Georgia (29)
New York (25)
Ohio (23)
Arizona (23)
New Jersey (22)
Washington (22)
