Kara Newbury – Acting on CMS' 2025 Final Payment Rule

We had the chance to sit down with Kara Newbury, ASCA’s Chief Advocacy Officer, to discuss what ASCs can expect in 2025. CMS officially published its 2025 Final Payment Rule, so we covered Medicare reimbursement rates, changes to the ASC Covered Procedure List, updates to the ASC Quality Reporting Program, and some other topics that every ASC should be aware of.

After my conversation with Kara, we’ll switch to our Data & Insights segment. In September, HST released our annual State of the Industry report, which analyzed client data from 590 surgery centers. Today, I’ll share with you the numbers we were able to put together regarding OR efficiency and patient throughput. We’ll look at OR Start Time, OR Duration, OR Turnover, and Recovery times.

Also, this week’s episode will be our last one in 2024. There will not be any new episodes on December 24th or December 31st, but we will hit the ground running on Tuesday, January 7th, with a brand new series on payor contracts. If you need content to hold you over, please see the list of educational resources below.

So, with that, we hope you all enjoy the holiday season with your loved ones, and we will see you after the New Year.

Resources:

• Connect with Maia Kunkel from ASCA for help scheduling a facility tour
• HST’s State of the Industry Report
• ASC Data & Benchmarking Video Playlist
• Content Bundles by Topic (board meetings, OR utilization, EMRs, etc.)

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