Hospitals continue to grapple with relentless financial pressures in 2025. While operating margins have stabilized, labor, supply and drug costs continue to soar. Many hospitals resort to workforce reductions to stay afloat, but this approach often backfires, leading to reduced capacity in revenue-generating departments, declining quality metrics, and eroded staff morale.
There’s a smarter alternative: outsourcing surgical staffing. By addressing inefficiencies in one of a hospital’s highest-revenue departments, this strategy delivers significant cost savings while preserving—or even enhancing—productivity and quality.
Surgical Services: An Overlooked Opportunity
Surgical services typically generate over 60% of a hospital’s revenue, yet many hospitals maintain inefficient staffing models in these departments. Common issues include:
- Underutilization of staff: Employed surgical staff often generate revenue for only 20–40% of their paid time.
- Administrative burdens: OR directors and HR departments are bogged down by scheduling and compliance tasks.
- Inconsistent credentialing: Compliance gaps jeopardize quality and regulatory standards.
- Productivity constraints: Inflexible staffing mixes struggle to adapt to fluctuating surgical volumes.
By tackling these inefficiencies, hospitals can unlock substantial cost savings without compromising surgical capacity or patient outcomes. This isn’t just a concept—it’s a proven solution, as demonstrated by AP Health’s partnership with Memorial Health System, one of the nation’s largest public health systems.
AP Health Saved Memorial $13 Million Since 2016
In 2016, Memorial Health System (MHS) faced critical staffing challenges at Memorial Hospital West, including a severe shortage of surgical assistants, credentialing compliance issues, and overwhelming administrative demands on HR and OR leadership.
Partnering with AP Health for surgical staffing services sparked a transformation that expanded system-wide:
2016: Launched partnership at Memorial Hospital West
2017: Expanded to Memorial Regional Hospital
2018: Added Memorial Regional Hospital South and Memorial Hospital Pembroke
2019: Completed system-wide implementation at Joe DiMaggio Children’s Hospital
From an initial team of 15 providers serving a single hospital, AP Health now has more than 50 credentialled providers staffing MHS surgeries across multiple facilities. This growth wasn’t driven by a corporate mandate, but by measurable results at each facility. The outcomes speak for themselves:
- 35% cost savings across all five Memorial facilities
- Over $13 million in total savings since 2016
- Increased surgical capacity, with no reductions in service
- Enhanced productivity in the surgical department
Why Outsource Surgical Staffing?
For hospital leaders seeking alternatives to workforce reductions, outsourcing surgical staffing offers several advantages:
Financial Flexibility: AP Health’s model converts fixed costs of Advanced Practice Provider (APP) employees into variable costs that scale with surgical volumes. This aligns clinical costs directly with revenue.
High-Quality, Consistent Staff: Finding qualified surgical staff is difficult. Our exclusive focus on surgical staffing enables higher quality and consistency. We track surgeon preferences and provide them with preferred APPs in 95% of surgeries.
Optimized Productivity: Many in-house surgical staff spend more than half their paid time idle between cases. Our ability to flex with case volume and schedule to minimize downtime dramatically increases productivity.
Reduced Administrative Burden: Outsourcing streamlines credentialing, compliance, and scheduling, freeing OR and HR teams to focus on core priorities.
Specialized Manpower for Robotic Surgery: As robotic-assisted procedures grow in complexity and prevalence, AP Health can supply cohesive, highly trained robotic surgical teams tailored to each facility’s specific platforms and specialties.
Customized On-Call Teams: From neurosurgery to complex trauma, AP Health develops and deploys dedicated call teams with deep experience in high-acuity, specialized service lines—ensuring dependable coverage around the clock.
The Bottom Line
With financial pressures showing no signs of easing, hospitals need innovative strategies to thrive. Outsourcing surgical staffing delivers significant savings in a critical revenue center without sacrificing quality, capacity, or staff morale. By partnering with a proven provider like AP Health, hospitals can achieve fiscal stability while positioning their surgical services for long-term success.