036 - Physician-Owned Surgery Center Says “Goodbye Insurance…Hello EXCELLENCE!”

Dr. Keith Smith cofounded the remarkably successful and wonderfully disruptive Surgery Center of Oklahoma. He and fellow anesthesiologist, Dr. Steven Lantier, left their hospital-based practices in 1997 to launch a physician-owned surgery center promising high quality care at a fair, transparent, and all-inclusive price. They had become fed up watching hospital administrators profit mightily while those who were actually caring for patients struggled. The inequitable and often outrageous billing practices of the hospital, the low Medicare reimbursement to physicians, and the cost-shifting to compensate for poor government reimbursement were all affronts to their values.<br />Dr. Smith is clear on the ethics of medicine (excellent quality at a fair price), the ethics of business (a mutually beneficial exchange between parties) and the importance of free market forces establishing the pricing and the success of an organization. He describes the morass created by government policies that harm patients while offering fertile ground for the “rising administrative class” to step in and profit from the chaos. He doesn’t mince words in his criticism of influence-peddling in Washington, D.C.<br /><br />Currently, the Surgery Center has 36 physician owners, 107 physicians on staff, 42 employees, and is internationally renowned. Healthcare institutions, including UCLA, have copied the Surgery Center’s transparent pricing webpage with its human form and drop-down menu of prices.<br />The Surgery Center accepts no insurance or government reimbursement and their prices are often one-sixth to one-tenth the prices patients are quoted elsewhere. This means that patients come from all over the US and beyond for high quality care at a price that is often much lower than what they would pay with their (allegedly) “full insurance” coverage. Dr. Smith describes several examples of the financial foul play patients are faced with when they believe they have insurance coverage but their deductible and co-insurance can bankrupt them. <br