The Archive

A proposed final judgment filed in the Southern District of Ohio would wipe out OhioHealth's anti-steering and transparency restrictions and install a five-year monitor; the government's competitive impact statement names the ambulatory surgery center as the lower-cost site payers were kept from steering to.

Surgery Partners signed definitive agreements to sell its stakes in two Idaho Falls surgical facilities to Intermountain Health, a deal valuing the facilities at about $1.15 billion and sending roughly $795 million to the ASC operator.

The CY2027 OPPS/ASC proposed rule sets the ASC update at 2.4%, extends the hospital-market-basket update formula one more year, and proposes adding 618 codes to the covered-procedures list. Published July 7; comments due August 31.

An April 6 Federal Register notice releases seven Original Medicare and Medicaid provider-and-service datasets, including hospital outpatient utilization and payment — and none of them is ASC-specific.

A July 29, 2025 HRS comment letter told CMS that same-day-discharge ablation is safe in appropriately selected patients — the endorsement that lets an electrophysiologist clear a medical-staff and payer review before the first $20,256 case.

The CY2026 final rule adds posterior lumbar interbody fusion (22630) and combined PLIF (22633) to the ASC covered-procedures list — instrumented spine work CMS first cleared toward outpatient settings in 2021 and walked back in 2022.

The ASC roll-up deployed $4.2 million on acquisitions in the first quarter — roughly 2% of its ~$200 million annual target — leaving most of a year's dealmaking still to come.

Tenet's ASC arm spent $125 million buying seven surgery centers in the first quarter, half its $250 million annual target, while telling investors a de novo costs under 2x what an acquisition runs at 8–10x.

FOCUS Investment Bankers' April 2026 benchmarks put single-specialty ASCs at roughly 5x-8x EBITDA and regional or national operators at 11x-17x — a gap that decides whether an owner sells a center or builds a platform.

A three-way joint venture will build a 9,000-square-foot cardiovascular surgery center in Newark, Delaware, projecting roughly 10,800 outpatient heart and vascular procedures a year in New Castle County by 2029.

A purpose-named acquisition vehicle, Ambulatory Surgery Center Acquisition HoldCo, has sold $21.0 million of a $22.6 million offering to 27 investors, per a June 11 SEC amendment.

Public Act 26-68, signed May 26, makes the Department of Public Health the successor to the Office of Health Strategy for certificate-of-need review, stands up a three-member CON panel, and adds a relocation carve-out and a two-to-three-OR expedited path.

Anthem's New York provider bulletin sets a July 1, 2026 penalty of 7.5% of the allowed amount of a participating facility's claim whenever a nonparticipating provider renders part of the care.

Aetna's June 2026 OfficeLink Updates set a 15% reduction to the technical component of CT services billed with modifier CT, effective September 1, 2026, applied across both the physician fee schedule and OPPS for commercial and Medicare members.

HB 3, approved by Gov. Tate Reeves on February 4, raises the major-medical-equipment CON trigger from $1.5M to $3M and the capital-expenditure trigger from $5M to $10M.

Medicare ASC rates for the procedures that drive center economics, straight from the CMS addenda — with the policy changes that move them.

A 2.6% update, 560 procedures added to the covered list, the inpatient-only list phasing out, and a payment-parity bill in the House: the CY2026 rule reset the board.

The $3.9 billion acquisition closed June 4 under an FTC consent order requiring divestitures in five markets, with Optum's SCA Health buying six of the seven divested centers.

Tenet's ambulatory arm grew adjusted EBITDA 6.1% and added 10 facilities in the quarter; HCA's same-facility outpatient surgeries fell 1.7%.

MedPAC's March report counts 49,258 total knee replacements in ASCs in 2024 — up from roughly 10,800 in 2020, the year Medicare first covered the procedure there.

The commission's March 2026 report counts 6,436 Medicare-certified ASCs — a net 140 more than 2023 — treating 3.4 million beneficiaries across 6.4 million services.

A five-year Medicare demonstration now requires prior authorization for five service categories — including vein ablation and blepharoplasty — with claims subject to prepayment review if centers opt out.

UnitedHealthcare is eliminating authorization for 30% of services that required it; commercial site-of-care programs increasingly waive review for ambulatory surgery centers while keeping it on hospital outpatient departments.