Senior Vice President at Atlas Healthcare Partners

Ryan Aldridge

Ryan Aldridge is a Senior Vice President at Atlas Healthcare Partners and a diligent and versatile healthcare professional. As a tycoon at Atlas Healthcare Partners, he is responsible for the firm’s strategy and growth. Ryan recounts how ambulatory surgery centers (ASC) have flourished in cardiovascular services with the leverage of evolving healthcare technology and, with the help of data; he shared his insights on the development of ASCs in the coming decade.

In an interview with Med Tech Insider, Ryan highlights the importance of artificial intelligence in the health care system.

Can you discuss the key aspects of a recent project or initiative you have been involved in?

Our focus is on ambulatory surgery centers (ASC), and we expect numerous cardiovascular procedures there. The technology in ASCs generally gravitates toward specific cases, including minimally invasive spinal procedures and cardiovascular imaging. The emerging need for cardiovascular procedures fosters the availability of more ASCs, and we emphasize on creating new Cardiovascular Ambulatory Surgery Centers (CVASC) and streamlining equipment.

ASCs are perfect for low-risk cardiovascular procedures like peripheral arterial and stunt peripheral vascular PCI procedures and electrophysiology because it is easy for people to enter Ambulatory surgery centers. Still, approval to perform ablation procedures is expected in early 2025. If so, it will bring in financial gains for payers, Medicare, and vendors. It will bring massive challenges to physicians in ASCs and it is cost-effective. It will transfer people from hospitals to ASCs.

What are the current challenges of adding cardiovascular surgery in ASC?

Our concern is Cardiovascular Ambulatory Surgery Center and the most significant challenges of adding CVASCs are cost and workflow because providing the right culture, equipment, and staff is substantial for high-acuity patients.

Physicians are only sometimes satisfied with an economical multi-specialty, so we have to set up a specialty space for cardiovascular surgery, which requires more technically advanced machines like IVUS, which is intravascular ultrasound that helps us in stem replacement and C-arm machines for increased image solutions.

Ambulatory services have a proven record of quick post[1]operation recovery and providing high satisfaction to patients at a low cost. Still, to provide high-quality care within cardiovascular space we require experienced clinical staff, nurses and leaders.

How do you envision the future of Ambulatory Surgery centers?

One of the most significant trends in the med-tech space in the future is the availability of ambulatory surgery centers for patients. It is a new market and new industry. In the future, the ASC will receive a higher volume of surgeries than any other specialty now. Even though physicians will be the main drivers of ASC in the future, other primary drivers, such as private equity, investors, venture capital, and managing services, will work along with physicians and may create a new model that may or may not involve hospitals.

Once the hospital feels competitive or loses many patients in the future, it will partner with the right physicians and management to create ASC centers in its hospitals or do whatever is required to build quality ASC centers.

What is the impact of technology and digital tools do you foresee in med tech industry?

The next evolving and trivial process in the med tech industry is using an implantable device or artificial intelligence to collect data, so we currently use Kaiser Laborites as our data analytics vendor.

Kaiser Labs claims data from different sources, which helps us navigate all the patients across all the service lines. Data analysis helps the management and other sectors of hospital organization to decide the cost of care for each patient. With the help of analytical tools, we can even create an analysis chart for the patients to show how best the ASC surgical service compares to hospitals, and this helps physicians monitor the overall network to maintain the cost curve and lower the cost of the entire surgical sequence. Data management and artificial intelligence help the whole of health delivery at large.