A new report by the National Center for Health Statistics shows the number of outpatient surgeries and other medical procedures performed annually at freestanding surgical centers increased to 15 million in 2006, up 300 percent from 1996.
Surgeries performed at such facilities now account for 42 percent of all outpatient operations, the report shows. The rate of visits to hospital-based surgery centers, meanwhile, which still perform the majority of surgeries, remained largely unchanged from 1996 to 2006.
Altogether, an estimated 34.7 million ambulatory surgery visits occurred in 2006, including 19.9 million to hospitals and 14.9 million to freestanding facilities, the report says, and 57.1 million surgical and nonsurgical procedures were performed during those visits.
Women accounted for 57.6 percent of the visits, or 20 million, and they had a significantly higher rate of visits than men, (132.0 per 1,000 people, vs. 100.4).
Ambulatory surgery visit lengths hospital-based centers were far higher than for freestanding sites, averaging 146.6 minutes versus 97.7 minutes – with longer times in the operating room, in surgery and in the recovery room.
The most common conditions treated by outpatient surgeries include cataracts, with 3 million cases; benign tumors, with 2 million cases; cancer, with 1.2 million cases; and esophageal disease and diverticulosis, both with 1.1 million cases, according to the report.
The figures come from the 2006 National Survey of Ambulatory Surgery by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Center for Health Statistics. The report is available online at www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nhsr/nhsr011.pdf.
