Janet L. Carlson

And that allows us to create space in the larger health system

or hospital settings, we're creating capacity so that they can truly focus on the sicker patients, the ones with multiple comorbidities that would not be safe and would not meet our anesthesia selection criteria in our ASC, rather keep those people in the hospital and take the things that are safe and ambulatory out of that setting and creating that capacity.

And it shouldn't be seen as a competitive thing.

It's really a win-win for everybody.

And it's just, you know, you hear the word site neutrality all the time, and that talks about the payment for the care provided in the ASC.

But, you know,

understanding that we're not there to cannibalize all the cases that happen in the hospital that there's so many things that need to be done and safely done for the patient in the hospital but there are so many things and that list is expanding every day over who we can take care of in the ASC and that's really what I'm excited about.

Well, we're very strategic about our thinking and we're looking at the demographics for each market where we have clinics.

And the goal is to provide services often in underserved rural areas where these people, patients have to drive multiple hours to get to a larger metropolitan area where there's healthcare.

And so as a company and as a team, we're going into these areas

hard to reach places and providing services in their community.

And when we do that and we establish ourselves there and the referral patterns with other providers in that area, we're then able to drive synergies and build an ASC strategically in a market where we've got multiple clinics that can support it.

And so

We are expanding and we are going to those markets where we can, whether it's a CON state or not, because like I said, I'm working across three states right now.

Two of the states do not have a CON law and one of the states does.

And so that changes a little bit about how we execute and plan for that space.

But one of the things that I think is exciting in the next 12 months are some of the

statewide or state-specific CON law changes or amendments that are coming.

This is going to relax a lot of the existing restrictions around developing or adding a new service line to an existing ASC.

This is going to allow ASCs to be truly multi-specialty and meet the needs of the community and offer these independent surgeons