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Many Surgery Centers to Serve As COVID-19 Hospitals

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Monday, March 30, 2020 (Kaiser News) — The Trump administration cleared the way Monday to immediately use outpatient surgery centers, inpatient rehabilitation hospitals, hotels and even dormitories as makeshift hospitals, health care centers or quarantine sites during the coronavirus crisis.

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services announced it is temporarily waiving a range of rules, thereby allowing doctors to care for more patients.       

Hospitals and health systems overwhelmed with COVID-19 patients will be able to transfer people with other medical needs to the nation’s 5,000 outpatient surgery centers, about half of which are affiliated with hospitals. This will give the country thousands of additional hospital beds and operating rooms, some of which have ventilators or anesthesia gas machines that could be repurposed as ventilators.

Outpatient surgery centers will be allowed to treat patients with other critical needs — such as serious injuries, cancer or heart attacks — unrelated to COVID-19, allowing hospitals to conserve scarce resources and reduce the risk of infection to these patients.

Until now, federal regulations allowed outpatient surgery centers to care for patients for a maximum of 24 hours.

“Transferring uninfected patients will help hospital staffs to focus on the most critical COVID-19 patients, maintain infection control protocols, and conserve personal protective equipment,” the agency said in a statement.

Many outpatient surgery centers had closed after being told to halt elective procedures. A coalition of anesthesiologists in recent weeks called for them to stop performing nonessential surgery and assist hospitals.

The waivers “will allow hospitals to save more lives” by performing “surgeries and procedures that can’t wait until the pandemic is over,” said Bill Prentice, CEO the Ambulatory Surgery Center Association, an industry group.

Before the CMS announcement, the California Ambulatory Surgery Association had expressed its willingness to help.

The outpatient centers “want to be part of the solution as the entire healthcare industry must rise to meet this enormous challenge,” said Michelle George, president of the California Ambulatory Surgery Association, in a statement issued Monday morning. “We have valuable resources to lend to this crisis — whether it is staff, space, equipment, supplies or other capabilities. ASCs are coordinating with the public health teams on local and regional levels to identify how their facilities can be utilized most effectively on a case by case basis.”



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