Surgery Centers’ Undisclosed Costs Leave Medicare in the Dark

The opaque finances of nearly 6,000 same-day surgery centers are making it impossible for members of an influential Medicare advisory group to do their jobs, they say.

Traditional Medicare paid ambulatory surgery centers $4.9 billion to provide outpatient surgical and diagnostic procedures for 3.5 million beneficiaries in 2018. From 2013 to 2017, Medicare per-enrollee spending increased an average of 5% a year at the centers.

But because the facilities don’t provide annual cost data to the Medicare agency, the advisory group can’t document the centers’ growth over time, can’t determine their profit margin on beneficiaries, and, therefore, can’t accurately evaluate ...