Outpatient Services Enjoying Increased Surgical Volumes

The report, by Kalorama Information (New York, NY, USA), an independent medical market research firm, examines surgery trends with an in-depth analysis of world population growth, aging demographics, lifestyle indicators, growing incidence of diseases, advances in surgical techniques, and several other general issues affecting the forecast for procedures. Procedure volumes are displayed for eight general categories of surgery, and the growth trends in those areas are forecasted to 2018 globally. The report also provides specific analysis for the United States, United Kingdom, Italy, France, Germany, Brazil, Russia, China, Mexico, and Japan. Regional segmentation is also provided for the US and Europe, Asia, and the Rest of World.

Over the past decade there has been a slow shift from all surgery done at the hospital to many surgeries done at outpatient surgical centers and surgeons’ offices, due to the development of safe practices and improved tools that have allowed physicians to perform surgical procedures faster and safer than at any other time in history, and have also reduced surgical procedure costs. The rapid adoption of laparoscopy in the 1990s was a start to this development; however, as with any industry, there are trends that continue to emerge due to advancement of technologies and issues that restrain the industry from moving forward with those advancements.

According to the report, the days of “operating as usual” are over, and hospitals must compete aggressively at a local level for surgical procedure volumes, which translates to income. While many complex and open surgical procedures will not be candidates for surgery centers and physician offices, the advancement of minimally invasive surgery (MIS) techniques has resulted in physicians opting to perform 60%–70% of their surgeries in surgery centers, moving away from the hospital environment. To counter this, hospitals are increasing media exposure to the general public by way of newsletters, interactive websites, and aggressive advertisement to patients.

Among the issues being affected by these trends that are significantly impacting the surgical markets today are the cost and economics of healthcare; medical tourism trends; safety concerns in surgery; sentinel events; hospital-acquired infections (HAIs); surgeon training and education; minimally invasive surgery (MIS) solutions; and the use of robotics in surgery. All these issues, and more, are under constant economic evaluation to assure efficiency in the allocation of health resources by healthcare and government agencies that must decide how to allocate their resources for a wide range of very different interventions.

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