Kathleen Hickman

Well, thank you for having me.

It's my pleasure.

Yes, of course.

So I am Kathy Hickman.

I go by Kathy.

Kathleen is my formal name, but yes, I'm part of the ASC industry and proudly I have been working at my center for 25 years this year.

I do serve as the administrator.

I do now have a clinical director, so I don't have to use that role as much, but my background is nursing.

So I am a nurse by trade and I also work part-time as a nurse with my company because I think it's important to be part of that.

So I have a master's in healthcare administration, as well as my bachelor's in nursing, and I am CASC certified, and I just love the ASC industry.

Well, there are so many trends.

I guess if I had to think about what I'm most interested in or thinking about is one, consolidation, number two, AI, and number three, moving higher acuity cases to our settings.

Those are my three top trends I'm following.

Well, back to the question two, I guess I am excited about all of those trends because with consolidation, we are seeing a lot more and more AOCs consolidating.

A lot of pros and cons with that.

We certainly would have better buying power, better economies of scale, and maybe better market clout.

Again, it could also decrease competition and a little bit of loss of autonomy, but that's okay.

I think that there's enough out there for all of us to share.

I am very excited about the increased move for higher acuity cases to our ASCs.

I think in New York itself, cardiology has not been approved, but now we're getting towards a closer approval process for adding cardiology to our ASCs and moving out of the hospital settings, as well as total joints.