Rising costs for healthcare and fragmented billing practices have always been a major concern for both patients and care providers. And even more in today's complex healthcare landscape.

Bundled pricing promises to address these issues and improve the experience for all parties involved. That's why the bundled pricing strategy has been gaining increasingly more interest in surgery centers nationwide.

In our recent webinar, Dr. Biraj Patel and ASC administrator, Ashley Poulos, discussed all aspects of the bundled pricing strategy with two experts, Dirk W. Carson and Becky Ziegler-Otis.

They delved into the concept of bundled pricing for surgery centers, exploring its benefits, implementation strategies, and potential impact on the healthcare industry.

View the full recording or read the crucial excerpts from the conversation below.

What is bundled pricing?

Dirk Carson: At its foundation, bundled pricing is a financial arrangement that puts all the included elements of a particular procedure together. For example, a total knee. So we're going to bring together the facility, the anesthesiology, the surgeon, the implants, and all the attendant costs to a traditional approach to that surgery in one episode, in one bundle. So we can set that definition on what's included and what's excluded. And then use that to set a market price or come up with a market price that is effective and sustainable.

But this cannot be a race to the bottom. This is about setting what the benchmark should be for the cost of care, as opposed to trying to drive down the price of the services to the point where we have to take pieces out of it that make it ineffective.

This is really about how we can provide sustainable pricing and the reimbursement that the provider community needs, but also in a way that we make it affordable for employers. It is about how to bring all of the services together in a way that serves the provider, the employer, and especially the employee, that patient, that's so important to us.