Your financial prep guide for Becker's Spine, Ortho & ASC 2026
Becker's 23rd Annual Spine, Ortho & ASC Conference runs June 11-13 at Swissotel Chicago with 240+ ASC and physician speakers. ASC economics are unforgiving: case mix, implant cost, and payer rates drive everything. Sorso is not an exhibitor, sponsor, or speaker at this event. This is an independent prep guide for ASC and orthopedic practice leaders.
The CFO read
ASCs that run on assumptions instead of numbers are getting acquired at lower multiples than they should. The single biggest financial lever in most ASCs is physician preference card standardization on implants and disposables. Most ASC owners we work with have never run a per-physician cost-per-case report. Pull that report before Chicago. The conversations about supply chain and PE valuation will land very differently when you know exactly which surgeons are costing you margin.
— Stanislav Sukhinin, CFA · Founder, Sorso
Why this matters for your bottom line
ASC profitability hinges on case mix. Adding two or three high-margin spine or total joint cases per week often moves EBITDA more than any operational improvement.
Implant and disposable costs are typically the second largest line after staff. Practices with stale vendor contracts often pay materially more per case than peers who renegotiate annually.
Out-of-network strategies have changed sharply with the No Surprises Act. Practices still using pre-2022 OON playbooks are exposed to compliance risk and falling collections.
PE consolidation in ASCs continues at pace. Independent ASCs need a clear view of their valuation drivers to make rational decisions about partnership, sale, or staying independent.
What to look for
Case mix optimization sessions with real EBITDA impact data, especially total joints, spine, and pain procedures migrating outpatient
Implant and supply chain sessions covering vendor negotiations, GPO economics, and physician preference cards
Payer contracting workshops for ASCs, including bundled payment and direct-to-employer models
Compliance sessions on No Surprises Act implementation and out-of-network billing strategy
Physician syndication and equity model sessions for ASCs adding new partners
Multi-specialty ASC governance and the operational tradeoffs as block schedules grow
Financial prep checklist
Review these before you go.
Run case mix by CPT and the contribution margin per case for each top-volume procedure
Map implant cost as a percentage of revenue, broken down by specialty and by physician
Walk through your payer mix and the per-case reimbursement variance across your top 5 payers
Audit block utilization by physician and put a dollar value on underused blocks
Reconcile your last 12 months of out-of-network billing against No Surprises Act exposure
Compare your EBITDA per OR per day against ASC industry data for your specialty mix
Before Becker's Spine, Ortho & ASC 2026, get your own numbers straight
Walk in able to hold every benchmark on the slides against your own practice. Three ways owners start with us:
Physical Therapy Accounting & CFO
Built for PT clinic economics
Visit-based margins, the 8-minute rule, payer mix, and multi-site P&L — for physical therapy owners. From $2,000/mo.
Explore your specialty →Accounting
Healthcare-specialist accounting
Books done right by people who understand clinic finance. Starts at $2,000/mo.
Explore Accounting →Free Assessment
A financial checkup before you go
Four minutes. See where your practice stands so every session is measured against your own numbers.
Take the assessment →
Founder of Sorso and a CFA charterholder. Before Sorso, Stan spent 19 years in corporate finance at institutions including UniCredit and Société Générale — managing a $450M loan portfolio and making senior partner at a major mezzanine lender by 29 — then built a fractional CFO firm exclusively for outpatient healthcare clinics.