PROVO — Pleas for patient choice followed Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr. around the Riverwoods Surgery Center on Monday afternoon.

The governor, along with Utah first lady Mary Kaye Huntsman and Sen. Michael Waddoups, R-West Jordan, toured the 9-month-old surgery center, meeting with administrators, doctors and patients and listening to their concerns about health care.

At the center of those concerns is insurance carriers restricting patients' options when it comes to ambulatory surgery centers, which specialize in outpatient surgeries.

Those restrictions block access to the affordable and accessible treatment of ASCs, as well as the personal attention they provide, said Jeff Love, Mt. Ogden Surgical Center administrator and president of the Utah Ambulatory Surgery Center Association (UASCA).

"Right now, the insurance provider, in most cases, directs (patients) where they can go," Love said. "Many very capable, very excellent heath-care providers are left out by health insurance plans."

As chairman of the Privately Owned Health Care Organization Task Force, Waddoups has been working to raise awareness of health-care concerns in Utah, specifically patient choice, transparency (upfront cost disclosures) and market reform of the insurance industry.

Legislation is being developed in the task force to address those issues.

Nationally, there are doctors who are not accepting insurance, instead requiring patients to pay for medical care in cash, Waddoups said.

"I think that's because of the bureaucracy that's involved in it now," he said. "Government should play part of the role in solving that."

Waddoups said Utah can be the leader — or at least part of the solution — in bringing such issues to national attention.

"I would like (the governor's) support, for the executive branch to say, 'Yeah, these things will be beneficial to the citizens of Utah,' " he said.

Huntsman called Monday's visit an "eye-opening experience."

"I'm very sympathetic to the work of Sen. Waddoups," the governor said. "We're going to follow up and see what we can do."

More than 80 percent of all surgeries can be performed as outpatient or same-day surgeries, said Francis Gibson, administrator of the Riverwoods Surgery Center, 320 W. River Park Drive, Provo.

ASCs can perform those surgeries, and low overhead allows them often to do them for less cost, he said.

For example, a cataract surgery that costs $3,100 at hospitals can be done for $2,100 at the Riverwoods Surgery Center, said Dr. Thomas Myers, a surgeon at the ASC.

ASCs also feature high nurse-to-patient ratios and educated staff, resulting in a low infection rate of less than .3 percent, according to the UASCA.

"Big hospitals are critical, but there are some things we can do better, less expensively and with a lower rate of infection," Dr. Myers said.

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