Why ASC Pricing Changes Everything for Device Companies

The Shift No One Prepared For

Ambulatory surgery centers are not just an alternative site of care. They represent a fundamental repricing of procedural medicine. When a procedure moves from a hospital outpatient department to an ASC, the reimbursement drops -- but the volume potential changes entirely.

For medical device companies, this creates a dual challenge: your hospital business faces margin compression while your ASC opportunity demands an entirely different commercial model.

Why Traditional Sales Approaches Fail in ASC

Hospital selling is relationship-driven and committee-based. ASC selling is economics-driven and physician-owned. The value articulation that works in a hospital IDN -- clinical outcomes, system integration, service agreements -- falls flat when the buyer is a physician-investor who thinks in contribution margin per case.

Three things change immediately:

• Decision speed: ASC purchasing decisions happen in days, not months
• Economic literacy requirement: Your rep needs to speak financial language fluently
• Volume sensitivity: Small per-unit savings compound across high-volume procedures

The Commercial Engineering Response

Pipeline Velocity = (Opportunity Generation x Deal Size x Win Rate) / Cycle Time.

Each variable shifts in the ASC context:

• Opportunity Generation increases because ASC proliferation creates net-new accounts
• Deal Size often decreases per facility but increases per territory
• Win Rate depends entirely on economic argument quality
• Cycle Time compresses dramatically -- the bottleneck is your rep's readiness, not the committee

The companies winning in ASC are not the ones with the best products. They are the ones whose sales teams can build an economic case in real time, on a whiteboard, in front of a physician who owns the building.

What This Means for Your Team

If your commercial team cannot articulate the financial impact of your device in an ASC setting -- contribution margin per case, break-even volume, time-to-ROI -- you are bringing a hospital playbook to an ASC fight.

The training gap is not product knowledge. It is commercial fluency.