Larry Teuber, MD, is the president of Medical Facilities Corp., a company that owns 51 percent interest in four specialty surgical hospitals in South Dakota and Oklahoma and two ASCs in California.

Here are five steps to increase patient collections at ambulatory surgery centers from Jim Devitt, an expert in healthcare revenue cycle management.

Transitioning spine cases into the ambulatory surgery center takes time and effort from the spine surgeon, and selecting the right team can make a big difference.

With increasing costs and decreasing reimbursements coming in the next year, it will be important for ambulatory surgery centers to cut overhead costs where possible to realize an impact on the bottom line. "Almost any cuts in overhead costs will flow directly to the bottom line as most facilities have fixed costs covered," says H. Thomas Scott, director of operations for Surgical Management Professionals. "Any expenses you can cut fall to the bottom line and have a huge impact on the distributable cash to the investors."

Here are five tips to improve profits this year.

Robert Carrera, president and CEO of Pinnacle III, discusses five action steps for ambulatory surgery centers struggling with debt.

Here are 10 statistics on highest and lowest compensating regions of the country for key surgeons in key surgery center specialties, according to the Medscape Physician Compensation Report 2012. All values are averages for surgeon respondents.

Andrew Schrage of MoneyCrashers discusses how surgery centers can build and maintain a positive cash flow in today's healthcare market.

Virginia Feldman, MD, chairperson of Hudson Valley Ambulatory Surgery in Middletown, N.Y., discusses how the big changes in healthcare will impact ambulatory surgery centers.

In a healthcare environment with increasing expenses and decreasing reimbursements, it's easy for providers to fall into debt, and hard to get out. Ambulatory surgery center administrators can take these steps to decide whether they are in too deep and to take affirmative steps to climb out.