An ambulatory surgery center (ASC) is a health care facility that specializes in providing surgery and pain management. An ASC can also be known as an outpatient surgery center or same day surgery center.
In general terms, ASC qualified procedures usually require a sterile environment and are considered more intensive than those procedures performed in the doctor’s office, but not so intense as to require a hospital stay. Typically, ambulatory surgery centers do not provide emergency services or overnight stays.
Procedures performed in surgery centers are broad in scope. During the past few decades, advances in medicine have allowed many procedures that used to be performed exclusively in hospitals to now safely take place in ambulatory surgery centers.
ASCs are generally able to maintain a lower infection and complication rate than larger institutions who serve a broader patient population.
