We have recently incorporated The Society of New York Office Based Surgery Facilities to advocate for accredited office based surgery facilities in New York State. We believe that office based surgery is the preferred place to perform many surgical procedures, in terms of cost, convenience and safety. All members of the society are accredited by one of three approved organizations and have satisfied the highest standards which have allowed the accreditation.

NYOBS will seek to ensure that the importance of office based surgery is universally recognized. To that end, our first goal will be to ensure that all accredited office based surgery facilities are recognized by governmental and institutional entities as equivalent to other venues where similar surgeries are performed.

We believe that all accredited ambulatory surgery facilities should be compensated by patients and insurance companies in a fair manner. There have been many attempts to circumvent usual, customary, and reasonable fees for office based surgery. To date we have been successful in many cases in our efforts to obtain fair reimbursement for our facilities.

We anticipate that with the backing of the almost 1000 office based surgery facilities in New York State with help from the medical societies, our organization will be successful in reaching the goals which we have set:

• Fair reimbursement of all accredited OBS facilities based on standard accurate UCR fees.
• Direct payment to all accredited OBS facilities by all insurance companies.
• Recognition of OBS facilities by governmental programs.
• Recognition of OBS facilities as being separate from a physician's office.

OBS facilities must recognize that if they are to accomplish these goals, there must be strong representation both in Albany as well as in Washington.

We hope that you will join us by filling out our online application or downloading our application and sending it with your check for $1,000. (Please see the application for special exceptions for smaller offices and for special circumstances for individual physicians who are not yet affiliated with an accredited facility.)

We are working to create pilot reimbursement programs for obs facilities. The sooner you join, the more likely you are to be included, so please join ASAP.

We need your help, not only to raise funds to support our cause, but demonstrate that accredited office based surgery facilities will join an organization to represent us and allow recognition of our worth. We have already made significant progress in our goal of obtaining recognition of office based surgery on both the state as well as national level, but we need to show the legislators that we have the backing of office based surgery facilities throughout New York State.

We welcome any suggestions which you may have regarding the development of our programs as we grow.

For more information, you may contact our Executive Director, George Dunkel.

We hope to hear from you soon.