Money Couldn’t Buy Surgery Centers Legislative Love This Year By Robert Warne - October 28, 2003
The $3.5 million outpatient surgery centers burned through over the past three years may have bought a few appointments sympathetic to their cause, courtesy of Assembly Speaker Herb Wesson, but in the end it didn’t buy them what they really wanted.
The outpatient surgery center lobby dodged a cost control bullet with SB 71 back in 2001 and succeeded a year later when Thomas Calderon omitted language related to such controls in AB 749.
But this year the centers weren’t so lucky. Even with Wesson’s appointments, their anticipated bang for their buck backfired when SB 228 was signed into law and derailed their work comp gravy train.
The new legislation caps outpatient surgery center fees at 120 percent of Medicare’s fee schedule for work comp claims.
Feeling a bit shortchanged for the $3.5 million they shelled out, Arthur Casey, the incoming president of the California Ambulatory Surgery Association told the Associated Press that, "Basically that money was spent in vain."
Adjuster / Examiner Claims Examiner Santa Ana Unified School District Santa Ana, CA