Skytron Blog

If someone told you ten years ago that cardiac ablations, coronary interventions, and complex spine procedures would be performed in ambulatory surgery centers, would you have believed them?

Today, that’s where outpatient surgery is headed.

The U.S. ASC market is expected to reach $48 billion in 2026. But we’re not going to spend this edition of The Sky is the Limit telling you that ASCs are growing and changing. You already know that.

What’s more interesting is what that growth looks like.

The procedures moving into ASCs are changing. So are the patients, technology, and clinical capabilities that follow them.
 

The Right Site of Care and Procedures Performed

For 2026, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) significantly expanded the procedures eligible to be performed in ASCs. Among the additions are electrophysiology studies and cardiac ablations, percutaneous coronary interventions (PCI), posterior lumbar interbody fusion, and vascular embolization or occlusion.

That’s a very different list from what many of us would have associated with an ASC a decade ago.

It also reflects a larger conversation happening across healthcare about the right site of care.

In a recent HFMA article examining hospital growth, healthcare strategist Eric Giese put it this way:

“It’s going to be less about good versus bad volume and more about whether the patients are being treated in the right site of care by the right provider and with the right treatment.”

He makes another important distinction:

“A patient might need hospital-based services, and they may actually be a high-acuity patient, but that doesn’t necessarily mean they need to be at the downtown medical center, which is already at capacity.”

The question isn’t simply whether a procedure has historically been performed in a hospital. It’s where that care can appropriately be delivered for the right patient.
 

How Technology Changes Things

Cardiovascular procedures can bring fluoroscopy and other advanced imaging into the room. Spine procedures may rely on C-arms, navigation, or intraoperative imaging. Advanced orthopedic programs increasingly incorporate robotics and image-guided technology.

And those needs don’t necessarily stay static.

A spine program may begin with a mobile C-arm and later add navigation or more advanced intraoperative imaging as its case mix expands. A cardiovascular program may start with procedures that can be supported in a traditional OR or procedural space, while future growth creates a need for more sophisticated imaging capabilities. Robotics can introduce another layer of equipment, positioning, and integration.

Grand View Research points to access to technologies including intraoperative ultrasound, C-arm imaging, and portable CT as one factor enabling more same-day procedures. It also expects cardiology to be the fastest-growing ASC specialty through 2033.

None of those technologies are particularly surprising on their own. What’s notable is the setting they’re increasingly being asked to support.

For organizations adding these service lines, the question isn’t only what equipment the first cases require. It’s what the service line could require next.

How and Where Hybrid Rooms Fit

Hybrid ORs have traditionally been associated with large hospital projects. But the line between what happens in a hospital OR and what happens in an ASC isn’t as clear as it once was.

That doesn’t mean every ASC needs a hybrid room. It does make flexibility a different conversation than it was a decade ago.

Healthcare organizations are making capital decisions at a time when no one can say with certainty what the next five years of surgical technology will bring.

Yet every capital decision made today has the potential to shape what the room can support next. Planning for the future means preserving those options, even when you can’t predict exactly what will come next.

For some organizations, that could mean planning space and infrastructure capable of accommodating advanced imaging. For others, it may mean vendor-neutral integration, adaptable overhead infrastructure, or room configurations that can support new equipment without requiring another major renovation.

Hybrid environments offer one way to build that flexibility into the surgical space, particularly for service lines where imaging, navigation, and minimally invasive techniques are already changing quickly.

Skytron works with healthcare organizations to design surgical environments around today’s clinical needs without assuming today’s technology will be tomorrow’s answer.

Ten years ago, some of the procedures moving into ASCs today would have been difficult to imagine in an outpatient setting.

We may not know exactly what will be in these rooms ten years from now. But we can build them so today’s decisions don’t limit tomorrow’s options.
 

 
Resources
1. Grand View Research. U.S. Ambulatory Surgery Center Market Size, Share & Trends Analysis Report. 2026.
2. Ambulatory Surgery Center Association. CMS Releases 2026 Final Payment Rule. November 2025.
3. Healthcare Financial Management Association. Is This the Last Year of Peak Hospital Growth?. July 2026.