Surgical patients have become increasingly selective when choosing their ideal treatment environment. Rather than relying on medical referral alone, patients choose ASCs based on personal recommendations, social media, and search engine results.
As digital marketing and word-of-mouth retain their strong influence over patients’ preferences, successful ASCs need to meet their expectations for advanced, technology-assisted procedures. To fulfilling these new consumer trends, ASCs need cost-effective technologies that provide an elevated quality of care.
Demand for Advanced Technologies from ASC Patients
Growing demand for technologically advanced care options has greatly influenced consumer demand among ASC patients. Computer-assisted surgeries (CAS) for hip & knee replacements, which include everything from robotic-controlled procedures to smart navigation instruments, offer greater precision, control, and alignment. This leads to surgical procedures with more consistent and less invasive outcomes, of which patients are highly aware and motivated to seek out.
Despite these advantages, surgeons often underutilize CAS because many tools are financially and logistically difficult to integrate into their practice. As a result, there is an operational and fiscal need to adopt surgical navigation tools that are user-friendly, cost-effective, and beneficial to patient outcomes.
Consumer Trends in the ASC Market
ASCs that invest in surgical navigation tools and other advanced technologies offer value-added services that acquire patients and generate positive word-of-mouth. Many centers feature these tools to improve outcomes and efficiency, to attract discerning patients, and increase profits.
Patients’ increased interest in computer assisted surgery coincides with the overall trend towards healthcare consumerism. Like consumers in any other industry, prospective ASC patients comparatively shop between centers to choose a facility offering the best-perceived value, quality, and service rather than relying on a single expert referral.
Although cost is a major motivator for many patients opting for outpatient surgery, savings alone may often not be enough to draw patients to one center over another. Across the industry, outpatient surgery centers already offer significant savings over inpatient procedures, which use robotic orthopedic instruments.
Once a patient is committed to seeking outpatient surgery, ASCs that provide technology-assisted surgery have an increased chance of acquiring that patient through direct marketing, word-of-mouth, or referral.
ASCs utilizing orthopaedic tools to support their surgical procedures differentiate themselves from other options in patients’ minds. To remain competitive in this rapidly growing market, both large and small ASC businesses need to identify cost-effective surgical technologies that fulfill both their medical care standards and patients’ expectations in the 2023 market of replacement technology.
New-build ASCs Invest Heavily in Computer Assisted Surgery
The global ASC market, worth $1.89 billion as of late 2020, is expected to grow rapidly in the next decade. In 2020 alone, hundreds of new ASCs announced their opening. Existing ASCs of all sizes need to position themselves to remain competitive as new investors crowd the market and compete for patient acquisition.
Investing in surgical technologies can appeal to potential patients, but the initial costs can consume resources that are needed to grow the business in other areas. With certain orthopedic instruments, offering CAS can require an enormous investment up-front with an impractically slow return on investment.
Instead of investing in expensive hip and knee robotic systems, ASCs can use smart tools, such as OrthAlign handheld navigation, one of the best hip & knee replacement devices, to provide the improved outcomes of CAS without massive upfront or ongoing maintenance costs that robotic orthopaedic tools bring. OrthAlign delivers accurate, individualized alignment to any patient with a single, disposable handpiece that can be used across implant platforms and surgical philosophies. The user-friendly design and interface provide streamlined workflows to reduce OR times and support multiple ORs concurrently without the investment, equipment, or pre-operative imaging required by many CAS systems.
Value-driven Computer Assisted Surgery is the Future
Patients are paying attention to trends in surgical technologies. As private-payer reimbursement for ASCs continues to increase, independent centers should consider incorporating value-adding technologies, like OrthAlign, into their offered procedures.
Few centers can afford to invest heavily in capital, often used with robotic assisted hip & knee replacements, and equipment that exhaust resources reserved for other business needs. To remain competitive, both large and small ASCs can and should promote their use of surgical technologies for new 2023 hip and knee replacements. Not only will OrthAlign handheld navigation improve patient outcomes and maximize the efficiency of procedures, but they will also position ASCs competitively in a dynamic market.