The Limestone Surgery Center in Marshallton recently contracted with NorthStar Anesthesia to bring a major provider to the practice. | DBT PHOTO BY KATIE TABELING
WILMINGTON — Limestone Surgery Center has signed a new partnership with NorthStar Anesthesia, a Texas-based anesthesia provider that boasts of a presence in 180 health care facilities.
NorthStar Anesthesia Anesthesia first started providing services at Limestone Surgery Center in November 2022, with nine employees working at the medical facility. As one of the largest anesthesia management companies in the country, NorthStar Anesthesia is used in facilities in roughly 20 states and has 2,000 anesthesiologists and certified registered nurse anesthetists in its network.
As one of the first freestanding surgery centers in the First State, Limestone Surgery Center was named the top ambulatory surgery center (ASC) in the state, per survey results from 4,000 medical professionals and performance data, conducted by market research firm Statista. Commonly-performed procedures performed at the center include orthopedic, gastroenterology, plastic surgery, ophthalmology, biopsies, lesion and cyst removal.
“It’s got a good reputation, and it’s well-known in the ASC community,” NorthStar Anesthesia CEO Adam Spiegel told the Delaware Business Times. “I think if you look at Delaware and New Jersey, there’s a lot of ambulatory centers that are struggling with all the issues we specialize in: consistency in approach and care, approach and helping deal with the challenges seen with regulatory agencies.”
“For us, this is a really good opportunity to have a real jewel in the crown, but also possible opportunities down the road to work across the state,” he added.
Over the years, surgeries have been moving out of hospitals and into ambulatory surgery centers, which Speigel noted accelerated through the COVID-19 pandemic as emergency rooms became inundated with COVID-19 patients and forced non-emergency surgeries to delay.
From his vantage point, Spiegel noted that the pandemic accelerated the move to more ambulatory surgery centers for health care providers, a less expensive alternative than in hospital treatment as well. NorthStar Anesthesia in particular has recently focuses on regional nerve blocks to partially block the transmission of pain to nerves – but also allows patients to be resuscitated as fast as possible
“It’s safer because patients aren’t going completely under. We’re also focusing on early recovery protocols that allow people to get out of anesthesia faster,” he said. “Now that the move to these centers have accelerated across the board, we are really thinking what can we do differently and how do we stack that effectively on what we offer?”
This is NorthStar Anesthesia’s second venture into Delaware, as it offered services in Saint Francis Hospital in Wilmington, and is involved in many facilities in the Philadelphia Area affiliated with Trinity Health Mid-Atlantic.
NorthStar Anesthesia plans on taking six months to assess day-to-day operations at Limestone Surgery Center and possible ways to advance protocols. But broadly, Spiegel believes that the Wilmington facility may be able to open the door for more business in Delaware – especially considering the growing older population in southern Delaware.
“We would love to expand into southern New Jersey and Delaware, and southern Delaware would be great,” he said. “But right now, we’re focused on knocking out of the park with Limestone before we look at those opportunities.”