The rise and rise of ambulatory care

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.