Ep. 1: Austin Cheng – Lowering the Cost of Care | This Week in Surgery Centers

Here’s what to expect on this week’s episode. 🎙️

Healthcare costs are rising at unsustainable rates, which is why lowering the cost of care is more pertinent and essential than ever.

Austin Cheng, Esq., CEO of Gramercy Surgery Center, Inc., grew up around surgery centers as his mother, Katy R. Chiang, founded Gramercy in 2006 – making her the first female to wholly own an ASC in New York State. After her passing, Austin took over as CEO in January 2020.

Since then, something he has become passionate about is lowering the cost of care.

The real question is – do ASCs have the capacity to lower the costs of healthcare in this country? According to Austin, yes. ASCs can play a massive role in fixing the health care system.

In this episode, we’ll cover exactly how:

➡️ Patient education
➡️ Community awareness
➡️ Aligning with payers (spoiler: they are not your enemy!)
➡️ Partnering with self-funded, self-insured companies
➡️ Capturing and presenting data that supports the claim that ASCs are higher value and lower risk than hospitals

In our news recap, we’ll cover the fastest growing ASC specialty, healthcare worker strikes, and the average hourly pay for RNs per state.