…Over 70 percent of the 635,000 annual surgeries in North Carolina are performed in outpatient settings, and 70 percent of these surgeries are conducted in the highest cost hospital systems. If North Carolina were to reform it’s Certificate of Need law by allowing for more multi-specialty ambulatory surgery centers to open, more patients could undergo surgeries in these facilities at a significantly lower cost than in a hospital outpatient setting.
by Katherine Restrepo
Director of Health Care Policy, John Locke Foundation