THE VALUE OF THE FACILITY FEE FOR THE AMBULATORY SURGICAL CENTER:
Many patients and physicians alike have asked about the facility co-pay that some of our patients are charged for our services. As a licensed Surgery center, we are required to bill for both the physician fee and a facility fee. In return, the insurance company reduces the amount of payment to our physicians. Patients with traditional Medicare will not have a facility co-pay, but some other insurance companies have instituted a co-pay of various amounts depending on their plan, just as they have increased deductibles and co-pays in general.
We feel that the high standards associated with the Ambulatory Surgery Center improve patient care. While the value of each of the following advantages may seem small, the combination of every one becomes significant to insure quality and safety for all patients. These are some of the features of our Ambulatory Surgery Center that differ from most office settings for surgery.
1) Fewer errors: There are strict policies and procedures to insure oversight for all aspects of patient care to prevent wrong site surgeries, missed biopsy and laboratory reports, and missed patient follow-up visits for serious disease. If there are significant events, they are logged, reported to state agencies and policies and procedures evaluated and changed if necessary.
2) Fewer complications: We closely monitor complications, measure quality, set goals and work withing benchmarks to keep post-operative bleeding and infection rates below nationwide practice standards.
3) Highly trained staff: Policies and regulations insure that out staff is properly licensed, trained and credentialed to perform all their duties. Continuing education is provided and enforced to meet or exceed all requirements.
4) Patient privacy and security: Maintenance of licensure and site visits from accrediting organizations insure that all HIPAA standards are met and monitored for patient privacy.
5) Rights of Patients: We distribute and display a code of Patient Rights, and preserve confidentiality. We adhere to and are monitored by accrediting organizations for truth in marketing, advertising and web content to prevent any misleading claims. We have a grievance policy for patients.
6) We continuously work on improving quality. We have an active Quality Improvement system that works to measure, investigate and continuously improve quality in all areas including peer review, risk management, protection of patients and staff. We measure patient satisfaction and make plans to improve and impletment corrective action to resolve problems that may by identified. We review records regularly to insure accurate and timely recording of patient encounters.
7) We innovate treatments, educate and train young doctors, set examples continuing education, perform research that continues to allow us to provide cutting edge treatment, add to the fund of knowledge of our specialty, and provide leadership in national organizations.
8) We are licensed, monitored, and site visited by multiple organizations each year including
a. CMS Medicare
b. Pennsylvania Department of Health
c. Pennsylvania Department of Safety
d. Accreditation Association for Ambulatory Health Care
e. Accreditation Coucil for Graduate Medical Education
f. Clinical Laboratory improvement Amendments CLIA
g. Occupational Safety and Health Organization OSHA
These organizations perform routine inspections of the Facilty, often unannounced, and review all policies, procedures, monitor adherence to regulations for patient rights, governance, administration, quality of care, quality management and improvement, clinical records, infection prevention, facilities and envirenmnet, surgical and anesthesia service, pharmaceutical services, pathology and laboratory services, teaching and research activities, fire safety and employee safety. The requirements are detailed and require a high level of daily maintenance. Altogether, it reduces errors, and maintains the highest quality of patient care. The additional co-pay that some patients are charged is required by their insurance company is balanced by the layers of attention paid to details of delivering all of their care.
We hope that his information assures you that the added value of our licensed Ambulatory Surgery Center is worth the co-payment that your insurance company requires.
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