The busiest ambulatory surgery centers in the Philadelphia region
Health insurers including IBX and Highmark want to move more care from hospital outpatient departments to surgery centers to cut costs, but not all surgery centers save money.
The two busiest surgery centers in the Philadelphia region last year were operated by Penn Medicine in Radnor and Jefferson Health in Center City.
Such facilities have grown increasingly popular as a cost-saving option for procedures that do not require intensive hospital resources or overnight stays.
While they offer convenience, the facilities operated by Penn and Jefferson both count as hospital departments for billing purposes, which means they cost more than surgery centers operated by independent physicians or other companies.
Penn Medicine Radnor Surgery Center operates within a large outpatient facility near the intersection of I-476 and Route 30. It logged 12,464 surgical visits in 2025, up from 8,961 the year before, according to data published last month by the Pennsylvania Department of Health.
Penn attributed the growth to the addition of new gastroenterologists in Radnor to perform colonoscopies, upper endoscopies, and other procedures. Colonoscopies, in particular, account for a large portion of the overall volume in surgery centers outside hospitals.
Jefferson Surgery Center was close behind, with 12,261 surgical visits, up from 2,639 in 2024. It sits within the Honickman Center, which opened in 2024 at 1101 Chestnut St. in Philadelphia. Jefferson has gradually expanded the array of surgical services offered there.
“Growth has been driven by both increasing patient demand and the strategic transition of services from other Jefferson locations, allowing us to provide care in a state-of-the-art outpatient environment,” Jefferson said in an email.
Other fast-growing surgery centers include two independently operated facilities focused on orthopedics, Premier at Exton Surgery Center in Exton and Restore Orthopaedic Surgical Institute in Chadds Ford.
Surgery center ownership matters
Even though the Penn and Jefferson outpatient facilities are not in hospitals, their ownership by large hospital systems enables providers to get paid as if they were located inside the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania or Thomas Jefferson University Hospital.
Hospital outpatient department billing rates are sometimes twice as much as the rates paid to independent surgery centers.
For example, surgery to remove torn cartilage from a knee can cost $7,190 when performed on an outpatient basis in a hospital, nearly three times the $2,477 cost in ambulatory surgery centers (ASCs), according to Philadelphia-area commercial insurance averages from Turquoise Health.
Health insurers Independence Blue Cross and Highmark have implemented policies this year seeking to save money for employers and patients by moving care out of hospitals and into ambulatory surgery centers or ASCs. Both insurers say they will only pay for certain procedures if they are done in an ASC.
But it’s not enough to move surgeries to a setting outside a hospital, given the hospital-like billing status of certain surgery centers.
“The cost savings from an ASC depend on the facility’s ownership, licensing, and billing model,” Richard Snyder, IBX’s chief operating officer, said in a email to The Inquirer.
IBX would like to see more ASCs in its Southeastern Pennsylvania market and is “prepared to help catalyze growth through continued value-based arrangements, strategic partnerships, and investments,” Snyder said.
Litigation over ASCs and other policies
In a July lawsuit against IBX, Jefferson claimed that the insurer’s ASC policy amounted to a change to the financial terms of their contract that needed to be negotiated.
The lawsuit said that ASC mandate will cost the health system $35.4 million, but doesn’t specify over what time period.
IBX filed a motion last week to dismiss the lawsuit, which was moved to U.S. District Court in Philadelphia from the Philadelphia Court of Common Pleas.
The insurer says that the lawsuit was premature because Jefferson filed it before completing a contractual process designed to resolve such policy conflicts.
