23 December 2020
With Covid causing the abrupt cancellation of most elective surgery and the pressure on acute facilities in hospitals, there has been a new focus on ambulatory care across the international healthcare industry.
Ambulatory surgical centres are often more conveniently located than hospitals and the costs to run them are considerably less than a hospital.
The Stourside hospital in Stourbridge, run by Ramsay Health is an adjunct facility to a larger hospital nearby and offers an operating theatre with two recovery bays, an ambulatory unit with six pods , 7 OPD consulting rooms, a treatment room and mobile MRI and CT scanner. The facility is typical of the shift towards ambulatory care that started long before Covid but is considered to be a rapidly growing trend in healthcare investment.
In the USA, interest in the sector has been driven by lower costs for the payers – whether insured or self-pay but also by healthcare providers who can often achieve margins that are equal to or greater than those achieved in a full-blown hospital facility.
Of more than 3.4m jobs likely to be created in the healthcare and social assistance sector over the next 7 years, half will be in ambulatory care. Market research has indicated that in the five years between 2018 and 2023, Ambulatory Surgical Centres are projected to grow at 6% a year reaching $36 billion by the end of 2023 – staggering numbers.