Surgery Partners, Inc., through its subsidiaries, owns and operates a national network of surgical facilities and ancillary services.
The company is a healthcare services company with an integrated outpatient delivery model focused on providing solutions for surgical and related ancillary care in support of both patients and physicians. The company is one of the largest and fastest growing surgical services businesses in the United States (‘U.S.’), with more than 200 locations in 31 states, inc...
Surgery Partners, Inc., through its subsidiaries, owns and operates a national network of surgical facilities and ancillary services.
The company is a healthcare services company with an integrated outpatient delivery model focused on providing solutions for surgical and related ancillary care in support of both patients and physicians. The company is one of the largest and fastest growing surgical services businesses in the United States (‘U.S.’), with more than 200 locations in 31 states, including ambulatory surgery centers (‘ASCs’), short-stay surgical hospitals (‘surgical hospitals’), and multi-specialty physician practices, among others.
Growth Strategies
The key components to the company’s strategy are to deliver outstanding patient care and clinical outcomes; continue to execute and expand upon the company’s physician engagement strategy in attractive markets; become the partner of choice for physicians seeking to become or stay independent; drive organic growth at existing facilities through targeted physician recruitment, service line expansion and implementing the company’s efficient operating model; seek partnership opportunities with payors to make health care more affordable for their members; continue the company’s disciplined acquisition strategy; offer new services to provide a more comprehensive continuum of care; enhance productivity by delivering on integration; and seek strategic relationship opportunities with health care systems looking to develop and/or enhance their ambulatory surgery footprint to better meet the needs of the patients and medical staff.
Segment
The company operates through Surgical Facilities. Surgical Facilities includes the operation of ASCs, surgical hospitals, anesthesia services, urgent care facilities and multi-specialty physician practices. The company’s surgical facilities primarily provide non-emergency surgical procedures across many specialties, including, among others, orthopedics and pain management, ophthalmology, gastroenterology (‘GI’) and general surgery.
Surgical Facilities
As of December 31, 2024, the company owned or operated 161 surgical facilities, including 142 ASCs and 19 licensed surgical hospitals.
The company’s typical ASC is a free-standing facility that performs planned surgical procedures on an outpatient basis for patients not requiring hospitalization and for whom an overnight stay is not expected after surgery. Each ASC usually has one to seven operating or procedure rooms with areas for reception, pre-operative care, recovery and administration. The staff of the company’s ASCs generally includes a center administrator, registered nurses, operating room technicians, as well as other administrative staff.
The company’s surgical hospitals primarily focus on providing non-emergency, scheduled surgical procedures, with a focus on less complex, elective surgeries that has shorter recovery times. The company operates both multi-specialty and single-specialty facilities. In multi-specialty facilities, a variety of surgical procedures are performed, including, among others, orthopedics and pain management, gastroenterology, ophthalmology, and general surgery. The company has diversified the mix of procedures performed at its facilities by strategically introducing select specialties that will complement existing services. In many cases, the company keeps certain facilities as single specialty where it suits an individual facility or market demand.
The company provides each of its surgical facilities with a full range of financial, marketing and operating services. For example, the company’s regional managed care directors assist the local management team at each of its surgical facilities in developing relationships with private insurance payors and negotiating private insurance contracts.
Surgical Facility Ownership Structure
The company owns and operates its surgical facilities through partnerships or limited liability companies with physicians, physician groups and health care systems. In some instances, the company acquires ownership in a surgical facility with the prior owners retaining ownership, and, in some cases, it offers new ownership to other physicians or health care systems. Of the 161 surgical facilities that were operational as of December 31, 2024, the company holds majority ownership in 83 of these surgical facilities and consolidated 118 for financial reporting purposes. The company provides day-to-day management services for a majority of its surgical facilities pursuant to a management agreement and receive a management fee that is typically equal to a percentage of the facility revenue. The company also provides intercompany loans to some of the surgical facilities which often are secured by a pledge of assets of the facility.
Strategic Relationships
The company believes that forming such strategic relationships can enhance its ability to attract physicians and access favorable private insurance contracts for the company’s surgical facilities in that market.
The strategic relationships through which the company owns and operates surgical facilities are governed by partnership and operating agreements that generally are comparable to the partnership and operating agreements of the other surgical facilities in which it owns an interest.
Sources of Revenue
Revenue from the company’s consolidated surgical facilities is earned from facility fees related to health care services performed in its surgical facilities and is included in the company’s patient service revenues. It is dependent upon government and private insurance sources of payment for the services the company provides.
Marketing
The company primarily directs its sales and marketing efforts at physicians who would utilize the company’s surgical facilities. Marketing activities directed at physicians and other health care providers are coordinated locally by the individual surgical facility and are supplemented by dedicated corporate personnel. These activities generally emphasize the benefits offered by the company’s surgical facilities compared to other facilities in the market, such as the proximity of its surgical facilities to physicians’ offices, the ability to schedule consecutive cases without preemption by inpatient or emergency procedures, the efficient turnaround time between cases, the company’s advanced surgical equipment and its simplified administrative procedures. Although the facility administrator is the primary point of contact, physicians who utilize the company’s surgical facilities are important sources of recommendations to other physicians regarding the benefits of using its surgical facilities. Recruiting teams develop a target list of physicians, and the company continually reviews its progress in successfully recruiting additional local physicians.
The company also markets its surgical facilities directly to private insurance payors via the company’s contracting and credentialing programs. Payor marketing activities conducted by the company’s corporate office management and facility administrators emphasize the high quality of care, cost advantages and convenience of its surgical facilities, and are focused on making each surgical facility an approved provider under local managed care plans.
Seasonality
The company’s revenue fluctuates based on the number of business days in each calendar quarter, because the majority of services provided by physicians in its surgical facilities consist of scheduled procedures and office visits that occur during weekday business hours.
Governmental Regulation
As of December 31, 2024, the majority of the company’s facilities were accredited by either The Joint Commission or the Accreditation Association for Ambulatory Health Care, two of the major national organizations that establish standards relating to the physical plant, administration, quality of patient care and operation of medical staffs of various types of health care facilities.
The company has implemented formal compliance programs designed to safeguard against overbilling and its management agreements comply with the requirements of the Anti-Kickback Statute.
The company is subject to the Medicare Patient and Program Protection Act of 1987, as amended by the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (‘HIPAA’), including the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health Act (the ‘HITECH Act’), which was enacted as part of The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009.
The company’s facilities also remain subject to any state laws that relate to privacy or the reporting of data breaches that are more restrictive than the regulations issued under HIPAA and the requirements of the HITECH Act.
The company’s surgical hospitals are subject to the Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act (‘EMTALA’).
The company’s clinical laboratories are subject to federal oversight under the Clinical Laboratory Improvement Amendments of 1988 (‘CLIA’) which extends federal oversight to virtually all clinical laboratories by requiring that they be certified by the federal government or by a federally approved accreditation agency.
History
Surgery Partners, Inc., a Delaware corporation, was founded in 2004. The company was incorporated in 2015.