Georgia's single-specialty, physician-owned ASCs will not have to answer the state's annual survey as written, since the information it requests about facilities' operations goes beyond what state law authorizes it to ask.
The Georgia Department of Community Health (DCH) sends out an annual survey to single-specialty ASCs, which are exempt from the state's Certificate of Need program, to collect data for planning purposes. A state statute authorizes the department to seek information on a facility's total gross revenues, bad debts, the amount of free care and charity care provided to indigent patients, the number of indigent patients treated, their county of origin and other related details.
The survey sent out early in 2010, however, asked ASCs to total their rooms, procedures, surgical patients and hospital transfers; the race, ethnicity and gender of all patients; their top 10 procedures by CPT code, name, amount and average charge; their patients and procedures by payer source; their total expenses; and the county of origin of all patients. Failure to complete the survey, the DCH announced, would result in fines and possible revocation of an ASC's exemption from the CON program.
In March 2010, the Georgia Society of Ambulatory Surgery Centers (GSASC) sued the department, seeking to prevent its members from having to compile the additional information. While a county trial court denied the request, a panel of judges at the Georgia Court of Appeals reversed that decision on March 30, 2011.
In their ruling, appeals court judges cited the trial court's misinterpretation of the law. "What DCH cannot do, and what it clearly attempted to do... is request information from ASCs that fell completely outside the specific categories set forth," they wrote.
"This is a great victory for the protection of confidential information in our ASCs," said GSASC President Stanford Plavin in a statement. "The state doesn't need this information to operate the CON program and the legislature didn't authorize them to acquire it."
While 3 of the 7 judges on the panel added a dissenting opinion to the ruling, GSASC Executive Director Peter Lohrengel noted that the dissents did not criticize the content of the society's case. Instead they argued that the society hadn't exhausted its options for seeking recourse from a state agency before filing its lawsuit.
A spokeswoman for DCH did not immediately return messages seeking comment.
David Bernard
