Editor’s note: This commentary is by Dr. Peter Gunther, who is a general internist and adult primary care physician practicing at GoodHealth in South Burlington. He serves on the board of directors of the Community Health Center of Burlington and is the board chair of HealthFirst, Vermont’s Independent Practice Association.
[R]ecently, a group of local physicians filed a certificate of need application with the Green Mountain Care Board requesting approval to open an independent outpatient surgery center in Colchester. National data shows that the costs of procedures at such community-based centers are 45-60 percent less than in a hospital setting. States and the federal government are increasingly acknowledging the attractiveness of these consumer health care options, with Medicare promoting their expansion across the country.
In other parts of the country, where freestanding outpatient surgery centers are available, patients reveal extremely high rates of satisfaction with their experience of care (one survey showed a 92 percent satisfaction rate with the care and services received as such centers).
The option to access a non-hospital based surgical center is something that Vermonters are asking for and is fully aligned with the state’s efforts to reduce health care costs while providing high quality care.
Across the country, high quality, lower cost surgical centers, such as the one being proposed, are the norm. In Vermont, however, there is currently only one independent surgical center, the Eye Surgery Center in South Burlington, ranking Vermont last in the country in terms of offering high quality, lower cost surgical options outside of the hospital setting. This is in contrast to our regional neighbors with 175 independent outpatient surgery centers in New England (including 23 in New Hampshire alone) and 116 in New York. The need for such a center in our community is clear given that the UVM Medical Center, where all outpatient procedures are currently performed, has already reached or is about to exceed its current outpatient surgical capacity.
As part of its application, the Green Mountain Surgery Center provided a variety of letters of support from health care consumer groups, employee organizations, business groups and others. Like most independent physician offices throughout the state, the surgery center will take all forms of public and private insurance and will commit to providing free or reduced-costs services to Vermonters at levels that match those provided by local hospitals. Freestanding outpatient surgery centers are highly regulated by the federal government, the state, and voluntary accreditation processes ensuring that their quality standards match those of local hospitals.
The option to access a non-hospital based surgical center is something that Vermonters are asking for and is fully aligned with the state’s efforts to reduce health care costs while providing high quality care.
