returning to healthcare facilities. "Some individuals were equating
'elective' with 'unnecessary,' which has a lot of negative connota-
tions," he says. "In my mind, 'elective' has to do with the conse-
quences of delaying the surgery, not necessarily never doing it. We're
really talking about procedures that can be postponed, that everyone
feels will be safer when the prevalence of this disease has decreased."
Elective cases can be held off for only so long before it's no longer
an elective case, points out John Goehle, MBA, CASC, CPA, owner of
Ambulatory Healthcare Strategies and host of The ASC Podcast with
John Goehle, in Rochester, N.Y. "If you postpone cataract [surgery] for
too long, the cataract gets worse, there's a higher risk of a complica-
tion as that cataract gets harder," he says. "It's the same with arthro-
scopies — the longer damage continues to occur in the joint, the more
difficult that proce-
dure is going to be
later on, and the
chance of an adverse
outcome or complica-
tion rises."
Postponed colono-
scopies might have
revealed cancers that
have now had months
to develop, impacting
survival rates.
"You get to a point
of deferring things
where it's going to
affect your health,"
says Mary Dale
M A Y 2 0 2 0 • O U T PA T I E N T S U R G E R Y. N E T • 4 5
