'Same-day' surgery centers popping up in NY City, 'big box hospitals will continue to shrink,' says Cuomo Medicaid Redesign team member-NY Post

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2/25/13, "Same-day surgery centers putting Brooklyn hospitals at risk of losing patients," NY Post, Carl Campanile

"New York City’s financially strapped hospitals are worried they could be put out of business by a new threat: rival “same-day” surgery centers that are popping up across the five boroughs, The Post has learned.

There are 36 so-called ambulatory surgery centers licensed in the city, according to the state Health Department. Many of them are owned and operate independently of hospitals. 

Medical experts said the same-day surgery centers are the wave of the future as large hospitals become less important — the reason two Brooklyn hospitals are trying to block a new facility from opening in their midst. 

“The future of health care comes in different forms and different shapes, and ambulatory-care surgery centers are part of that change,” said Stephen Berger, who serves on Gov. Cuomo’s Medicaid Redesign Team.

“The big-box hospitals will continue to shrink,” added Berger, who heads a state group analyzing Brooklyn’s health-care system.
The emergence of the surgery centers — state-licensed mini-facilities which perform many of the same operations as hospitals with fewer staff and overhead — has set off alarms among Brooklyn’s financially distressed hospitals."...

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