The healthcare industry, including hospitals, ASCs and physicians' offices, added 14,500 jobs from Dec. 2009-Jan. 2010, according to a news release from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Neurosurgeon John Caruso, MD, FACS, president of Parkway Neuroscience & Spine Institute/Parkway Surgery Center in Hagerstown, Md., has been the driving force behind Parkway, an integrated treatment facility that features an ASC, imaging center and physical therapy practice that offers patients and physicians the convenience of "one-stop shopping."

Pain management can be a profitable addition to a surgery center. However, due to the nature of the specialty, balance is essential to the success of pain management.

Mike Heifferon, Ph.D, MBA, chief operating officer, and Marie Masztak, RN, BEd, vice president of nursing, of Deca Health, a management, billing and development company specializing in interventional pain management services, provide the following five steps to creating a balanced pain management practice in your ASC.

Here are the average and median debts and leverage ratios for surgery centers that perform more than 50 percent of the case volume in orthopedics, according to VMG Health's 2009 Intellimarker.

Three veteran owners of orthopedic and spine ASCs share best practices on ensuring profitability, lessons they have learned and plans for the future.

Becker's Hospital Review/Becker's ASC Review are now accepting nominations for the "50 Best Places to Work in Healthcare."

Nationally, just 1-3 percent of spine surgeries are performed in an outpatient center, but Robert S. Bray Jr., MD, believes that rate will climb in the next decade as surgeons, payors and patients alike discover the lower costs and high quality of minimally-invasive surgery in an ASC.

1. Orthopedics accounts for around 16 percent of the total case volume mix in surgery centers, second behind GI/endoscopy (25 percent), ophthalmology (18 percent) and pain management (17 percent). The average surgery center performs 4,869 cases annually, which would average to around 779 orthopedics cases annually.

Here are eight facility expenses for surgery centers that perform more than 50 percent of their cases in orthopedics, according to VMG Health's 2009 Intellimarker.

The healthcare sector continued to see growth in employment from Sept. 2009 to Oct. 2009, adding 28,500 jobs, according to new data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor and Statistics.