Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center rode higher outpatient volumes to improved operating income in 2016, as new and expanded regional outpatient centers come online outside of the health system's Manhattan home base.
Outpatient visits are growing at a much faster rate than inpatient across the country as technological advances in surgeries and for other care allow for more illnesses to be treated in the less-costly setting, and MSK is taking advantage of the trend.
“MSK continues to expand its capacity and shift care to the lower-cost outpatient setting,” the center noted in its 2016 year-end financial disclosure released Wednesday.
MSK's newest regional outpatient center in Monmouth, N.J. opened in December and is expected to get up to speed throughout this year, the health system said.
The renowned cancer center also almost doubled the size of its Commack, N.Y., regional outpatient site in October in the first phase of an ongoing renovation, the system said.
That additional capacity is expected to add to outpatient volume gains that MSK made throughout 2016 both at its regional centers and the Manhattan campus.
MSK's performance stands in stark contrast to another noted cancer center, MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, whose president Dr. Ronald DePinho announced last week that he was stepping down in the wake of a $266 million loss in fiscal 2016.
Outpatient visits in 2016 rose 6% to 665,495 from 626,403 in 2015, MSK's disclosure showed.
A big contributor to the increase was MSK's Westchester (N.Y.) outpatient center, which opened in 2014 and exceeded expectations in patient volume and revenue growth in 2016.
Community Health Systems, the 158-hospital investor-owned health system in Franklin, Tenn., today derives 56% of its total revenue from outpatient services, CFO Larry Cash told analysts Thursday at the Barclays Global Healthcare Conference in Miami.
Hospital admissions at MSK also increased to 23,078 in 2016 compared with 22,467 in 2015. For the year, those admissions reflected a solid 93% occupancy rate on the 473 beds in service.
Even length of stay edged up a notch in 2016 to an average 6.9 days from 6.8 days in 2015, the filing noted.
That performance led to a 2016 increase in income from operations of $178.2 million on revenue of $3.98 billion compared with income from operations of $169.2 million on revenue of $3.68 billion in 2015.