We have recently incorporated The Society of New York Office Based Surgery Facilities as a not for profit 501(c)(6) corporation to advocate for accredited office based surgery facilities in New York State.
Drs. Tichenor and Antell with our lobbyist Diane Frazier at a fundraiser for Governor Cuomo
Drs. Tichenor, Shelton and Antell meeting with legislators in Albany
We believe that office based surgery is the preferred place to perform many surgical and endoscopic procedures, in terms of cost, convenience and safety. All members of the society are accredited by one of three approved organizations and have satisfied the highest standards which have allowed the accreditation.
NYOBS will seek to ensure that the importance of office based surgery is universally recognized. To that end, our first goal will be to ensure that all accredited office based surgery facilities are recognized by governmental and institutional entities as equivalent to other venues where similar surgeries are performed.
An article in The New York Times about colonoscopies fails to explain that the reason for a switch to ASCs from office based locations is because most insurance companies don’t pay for office based surgery facility fees any more.
We believe that all accredited ambulatory surgery facilities should be compensated by patients and insurance companies in a fair manner. There have been many attempts to circumvent usual, customary, and reasonable fees for office based surgery. To date we have been successful in many cases in our efforts to obtain fair reimbursement for our facilities.
We anticipate that with the backing of the almost 1000 office based surgery facilities in New York State with help from the medical societies, our organization will be successful in reaching the goals which we have set:
- Fair reimbursement of all accredited OBS facilities based on standard accurate UCR fees.
- Direct payment to all accredited OBS facilities by all insurance companies.
- Recognition of OBS facilities by governmental programs.
- Recognition of OBS facilities as being separate from a physician’s office.
We hope that you will join us by filling out our application along with your payment of the first years’ dues of $1,000. (Please see the application for individuals who are not affiliated with an accredited facility.)