John D. Brock, administrator for the NorthStar Surgical Center, discusses his surgery center's new program and why it was the right time for the facility to expand its offerings. NorthStar Surgical Center in Lubbock, Texas, began offering total knee, uni-knee, total ankle and total shoulder procedures at the beginning of the year. The ambulatory surgery center has performed approximately 10 of the procedures so far. Q: What led NorthStar to consider expanding your services to offer total joint replacement?
John Brock: Several of our physician-partners expressed a desire to provide this service to their patients in an outpatient setting. The mindset is that the physicians wanted to provide the appropriate patient seeking this procedure with the same access to outpatient care as the more conventional orthopedic patient. The patient benefits not only from going home much sooner than in the past, but we can perform the procedure for a significantly lower cost. Currently we have two physicians that perform the total knee, three that perform the uni-knee, three that perform the total ankle and one that performs the total shoulder.
Click here to read the full Becker's ASC Review article about adding joint replacement to an ASC.