Deeper Insights Ahead of ASCA 2025

Every year, the ASCA Annual Conference acts like a giant mirror for our industry—showing us where we’ve made progress and still have work to do. Reviewing the ASCA 2025 schedule, a few significant themes stood out: more innovative development, operational excellence, and revenue cycle innovation.

These areas aren’t just buzzwords at Surgical Management Professionals (SMP). They’re the foundation of building stronger, more resilient surgery centers—and ultimately, how we help leave the ASC industry better than we found it.

Heading into ASCA 2025, here’s a deeper look at what’s coming—and what centers should be thinking about if they want to survive and thrive in this next chapter.

ASC Development Must Be Strategic, Not Opportunistic

This year’s session focuses on ASC New Builds and Expansions—and it couldn’t be more timely. Post-pandemic, we’ve seen a surge of physician groups, health systems, and private equity firms rushing into ASC development. However, growth without strategy can be just as dangerous as not having growth at all.

At SMP, our development philosophy is simple but demanding:
Start with the hard questions.

Is there enough market demand?

• Is your payor mix strong enough to support profitability?
• Is your physician group aligned, or are they just loosely affiliated?
• Are you building a facility for today’s needs, or tomorrow’s expansion?

We believe a feasibility study shouldn’t be a “check the box” exercise—it should be a brutal, data-driven reality check. That’s why our development process includes financial modeling, deep physician commitment analysis, reimbursement forecasting, and patient volume projections.

The goal isn’t just to open doors—it’s to open the right doors, for the right reasons, at the right time.

One of the biggest mistakes we see is centers built too big, too fast, without a true understanding of case mix or physician engagement. That’s why at SMP, we design with flexibility. We build operating rooms sized for the cases you’re performing today, with the ability to scale when volumes grow, not if they grow.

In today’s environment, development isn’t about flashy grand openings. It’s about creating long-term operational and financial sustainability.

Bridging Clinical Excellence and Financial Success

Another big focus this year is management and specifically, how operational processes impact financial outcomes. We talk about this all the time at SMP: Operations and revenue cycle aren’t two separate conversations—they’re two sides of the same conversation.

Here’s why it matters:

• Inefficient patient scheduling creates billing errors and delays.
• Poor documentation habits lead to costly denials.
• Inconsistent prior authorization processes result in lost revenue.
• Lack of surgical block management creates underutilization and lost profitability.

When we step in to manage a center, one of the first things we look at is how tightly operations are integrated with revenue cycle processes.
Are schedulers working closely with pre-cert teams?
Is clinical documentation optimized for coding accuracy?
Are front desk staff trained on insurance verification best practices?

At SMP, we don’t just optimize for throughput—we optimize for throughput and payment. That’s a critical difference.

Also, culture plays a bigger role than people realize. Centers that view operations and finance as part of the same mission—serving patients well while stewarding financial resources—are the ones that outperform, year after year.

From Afterthought to Strategic Weapon

There’s a whole session this year on best practices in revenue cycle management—and it couldn’t come at a better time.

Revenue cycle used to be the department you called when claims weren’t getting paid fast enough. Today, it’s one of the most important strategic levers an ASC has.

At SMP, we approach revenue cycle management differently than most firms:

• We’re proactive, not reactive.
We focus on building clean claims processes from patient intake forward, not just fixing denials on the back end.
• We believe analytics drive improvement.
If you can’t see your clean claim rate, days to bill, or denial reasons at a glance, you can’t manage them. We deliver transparent, easy-to-understand reporting dashboards for every facility we support.
• We customize solutions.
Every ASC has unique case types, payer mixes, and physician behaviors. Your revenue cycle process should match—not force you into a one-size-fits-all model.

One trend we’re pushing hard: authorizations and verifications as front-end marketing tools.
Patients decide where to have surgery based not just on physician recommendation, but on ease of access, transparency of cost estimates, and hassle-free scheduling.
Revenue cycle is patient experience—and centers are using it as a competitive advantage.

Emerging Challenges and Opportunities

Beyond what’s directly on the ASCA 2025 schedule, there are bigger shifts every ASC leader needs to keep on their radar:

• Anesthesia access challenges are accelerating. Centers that fail to plan for anesthesia coverage now may face crippling disruptions later. New partnership models will be key.
• Technology and data integration will separate leading centers from the rest. If your scheduling system, EHR, revenue cycle, and patient communications don’t talk to each other, you’re operating at a competitive disadvantage.
• Consumerism isn’t coming—it’s here. Patients expect cost transparency, appointment convenience, and digital communication. Centers that ignore patient experience as a marketing and operational strategy will struggle to stay relevant.
• Risk-based contracts and bundled payments will push more pressure on cost control. Centers that understand their true cost per case and can manage efficiencies without compromising outcomes will lead the market.

SMP is already helping centers prepare for these realities—not react to them later.

ASCA 2025 is shaping up to be more than just a conference—it’s a call to action.
The world of ambulatory surgery is changing fast, and the winners will be those who invest in smarter development, tighter operational alignment, and a revenue cycle that doesn’t just bill—but drives growth.

At SMP, we believe the best days for ASCs are still ahead. But thriving in this new environment requires clear eyes, steady hands, and partners who understand the full picture—not just one piece of it.

If you’re attending ASCA 2025, We’d love to connect.
Let’s talk about where your center is today, where you want it to go, and how SMP can help you get there—with strategies that deliver not just short-term wins, but long-term strength. Contact Us