50 Leading Global Thought Leaders in Day Surgery

Introduction

The single most important shift in global surgery over the past two decades did not happen in a hospital. It happened in a building most patients leave within hours of arriving.

Day surgery, known in the United States as ambulatory surgery and in many parts of the world as day case surgery or same-day surgery, has quietly become the dominant model for delivering surgical care. In the United States alone, more than 70 percent of all surgical procedures are now performed in outpatient settings, according to data from the Ambulatory Surgery Center Association. In Australia, the United Kingdom, and across Europe, day hospital and day surgery units have emerged as the preferred site of care for everything from cataracts and colonoscopies to joint replacements and cardiovascular procedures. The financial case is clear: the same procedure that costs a hospital outpatient department tens of thousands of dollars can often be performed in a day surgery centre at a fraction of the price. But the clinical and leadership case is equally compelling, and that is where this list begins.

Leading a day surgery or ambulatory surgery centre is one of the most demanding leadership challenges in healthcare. Unlike the hospital setting, where size and hierarchy provide a certain structural buffer, the day surgery leader works in a lean, high-throughput environment where every decision about staffing, scheduling, surgeon relationships, culture, and quality has an immediate and visible effect. There is nowhere to hide when a procedure list goes wrong. There is no other ward to absorb a patient who is not ready to go home. Leadership in this setting is not theoretical. It is operational, relational, and constant.

The thinkers and practitioners on this list are the people who are shaping what excellent day surgery leadership looks like in 2026. Some lead large national networks. Others run single-facility centres that are producing outcomes and cultures their multi-site peers would envy. The list deliberately moves past the household names of broader healthcare leadership to surface the voices who are genuinely building and advancing the ambulatory surgery and day surgery field, from Washington DC to Canberra, from the National Health Service to the private day hospital sector in Australia, and from the International Association for Ambulatory Surgery's global network to the frontlines of ASC administration in the United States.

Two terms appear throughout this blog and mean the same thing: "day surgery" is the preferred term in Australia, the United Kingdom, and many parts of Europe, while "ambulatory surgery centre" or "ASC" is the dominant US terminology. Both refer to facilities where patients receive planned surgical care and are discharged on the same day, without an overnight hospital admission.

Jonno White is a Certified Working Genius Facilitator and bestselling author of Step Up or Step Out, with over 10,000 copies sold globally. Jonno works with leadership teams in healthcare, schools, corporates, and nonprofits around the world. When day surgery leadership teams are navigating the team dynamics, communication challenges, and culture questions that underlie operational performance, these are precisely the conversations Jonno facilitates. Email jonno@consultclarity.org.

Why Day Surgery Leadership Matters

The stakes in day surgery leadership are easy to underestimate. From the outside, a surgery centre looks like a well-organised conveyor belt: patients arrive, procedures are completed, patients go home. The reality is far more demanding.

Day surgery leaders must simultaneously manage surgeon expectations, patient safety, staff culture, regulatory compliance, payer relationships, and financial performance, all in a setting where the patient population turns over every single day and where the consequences of a poor decision can include not only a patient harmed but a surgeon who takes their cases elsewhere. Research from the ASC Quality Collaboration shows that patient safety culture is one of the most significant predictors of clinical outcomes in the ambulatory setting. When staff feel psychologically safe to raise concerns, errors are caught. When culture erodes, near-misses go unreported and events occur.

The shift of higher-acuity procedures into the ASC setting, accelerating since 2020 with the addition of total joint replacements, spine procedures, and cardiovascular cases to the Medicare Ambulatory Surgery Center Covered Procedures List, has raised the complexity of day surgery leadership enormously. Leaders must now build teams capable of safely managing patients with higher clinical risk in an environment that was originally designed for lower-acuity procedures. This is not merely an operational challenge. It is a cultural and human one.

The thinkers on this list are the people who are working through these questions in real time, building frameworks, sharing knowledge, advocating for policy, and demonstrating through daily practice what excellent day surgery leadership actually looks like. For more on how team culture and communication underpin clinical performance, read my blog post on thought leaders in hospital leadership at https://www.consultclarity.org/post/thought-leaders-hospital-leadership-global.

How This List Was Compiled

This list was compiled by examining the depth and quality of contribution each person makes to the day surgery and ambulatory surgery leadership field. Each person included holds genuine credentials in the field, whether through leading a surgery centre, running a national or international advocacy body, conducting research on quality and patient safety, advancing policy, or consulting and educating practitioners at scale. The list spans Australia, the United States, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, and the international ambulatory surgery community.

Geographic and disciplinary diversity were deliberate priorities. The list includes surgeons and nurses, CEOs and administrators, advocates and consultants, academics and frontline practitioners. The goal was to reflect the genuine breadth of the day surgery leadership community, not to reproduce the same list of names that appears on every general healthcare leadership platform. Many of the people here are not widely known outside their specific professional community. That is precisely the point.

Category One: The Architects of the ASC Movement

The United States leads the world in ambulatory surgery volume and infrastructure, and the executives who have built the major ASC networks have also, by necessity, developed the most sophisticated thinking about what it means to lead surgery centres at scale. This category profiles the leaders whose strategic decisions have shaped the industry, whose advocacy has changed policy, and whose thinking is setting the agenda for where ambulatory surgical care goes next.

1. William Prentice

Chief Executive Officer | Ambulatory Surgery Center Association | United States

Since taking the helm of the Ambulatory Surgery Center Association in 2010, Bill Prentice has been the most consistent public voice for the interests of the more than 6,000 ASCs operating across the United States. His leadership of ASCA has coincided with what is arguably the most transformative period in the history of ambulatory surgery, the shift of total joint replacements, cardiovascular procedures, and spine surgery into the outpatient setting, and he has been instrumental in negotiating the regulatory and reimbursement frameworks that made that shift possible.

Prentice's particular strength is translating the complexity of CMS reimbursement rules, payer policy, and congressional dynamics into clear, actionable intelligence for ASC operators. His Advancing Surgical Care Podcast has become the most trusted briefing resource in the sector, and his annual testimony and advocacy work has secured meaningful improvements to the ASC Covered Procedures List and reimbursement rates. For anyone seeking to understand the policy forces shaping the ASC industry, Prentice is the primary source.

2. Winborne Macphail

Chief Executive Officer | SCA Health | United States

When Winborne Macphail became CEO of SCA Health in 2025, she assumed leadership of one of the largest ambulatory surgery networks in the country, overseeing more than 370 centres and specialty practices across 37 states. A fourteen-year veteran of SCA, she had previously served as president and chief operating officer, driving business development, operational strategy, and the organisation's expansion into higher-acuity procedures including robotics and AI-assisted surgical care.

What distinguishes Macphail as a thought leader is her sustained focus on physician and teammate engagement as the primary driver of ASC performance. SCA Health's work on psychological safety in surgery centres, led under her tenure by Chief Nursing Officer Dare Meeks, has produced practical frameworks for building cultures where clinical staff feel genuinely empowered to raise safety concerns. Her approach to ASC leadership recognises that the people in the building are the quality metric that matters most.

3. Brett Brodnax

Executive Chairman | United Surgical Partners International | United States

With more than three decades in ambulatory surgery, Brett Brodnax has built one of the most admired reputations in the industry for delivering sustained business performance without sacrificing the mission-driven culture that makes ASCs different from commodity healthcare. As Executive Chairman of USPI, which holds ownership interests in more than 520 ASCs across 37 states, Brodnax has shaped the company's philosophy that physician alignment and collaborative partnership are the foundations on which all other operational performance rests.

His thinking on health system-physician-management company joint ventures, the model he helped pioneer at Baylor Health Care System and subsequently refined through USPI's national expansion, has become the dominant framework for how ASC ownership is structured in the United States. The consistent message from his tenure is that the deals that work are the ones built on trust and shared mission, not merely on financial engineering.

4. Travis Messina

Chief Executive Officer | Regent Surgical Health | United States

Travis Messina brings an unusual leadership biography to ambulatory surgery: before joining Regent Surgical Health in 2023, he built and sold Contessa, a hospital-at-home company that he guided from concept to acquisition by Amedisys. The experience of building a care model from scratch that required deep physician alignment, payor collaboration, and patient trust across entirely new settings gave Messina a perspective on ASC leadership that differs from the traditional ASC career path. He was recognised as one of Modern Healthcare's "Top 25 Innovators in Healthcare" in 2022.

At Regent Surgical Health, that perspective has produced results. The company's physician and employee satisfaction scores, with physician Net Promoter Scores in the 90th percentile and employee satisfaction in the 94th percentile, suggest that Messina's strategy-first approach to partnership is producing cultures that consistently outperform. His engagement with AI, EHR, and data-driven operations gives his thought leadership a clarity about what the next decade in ASC leadership will require.

5. Jeff Snodgrass

President and Chief Executive Officer | AMSURG | United States

Jeff Snodgrass has led AMSURG since 2020, first as president and then as CEO from 2023, overseeing one of the largest ambulatory surgical care platforms in the country across more than 250 surgery centres in 34 states. Following Ascension's acquisition of AMSURG, which completed in 2025, Snodgrass has focused on preserving and advancing the collaborative operating model that is central to the organisation's success, integrating AMSURG's physician partnership approach within Ascension's broader health system mission.

His earlier leadership of Azura Vascular Care and National Cardiology Partners, where he transformed the company from an office-based outpatient business into an ambulatory surgical care company, gives him a track record of successfully navigating major operational and ownership transitions in the ASC space.

6. Shakeel Ahmed

Founder and Chief Executive Officer | Atlas Surgical Group | United States

Dr Shakeel Ahmed has built one of the most unusual intellectual reputations in ambulatory surgery. Not content with operating one of the largest ASC networks in the Midwest, he has also authored nine books, written hundreds of peer-reviewed articles, and serves as publisher and editor-in-chief of Surgery Business Magazine, making him perhaps the most prolific academic voice on the business and operations of ambulatory surgery worldwide. He also lectures internationally and advises governments and health systems on outpatient surgical infrastructure.

What makes Ahmed particularly distinctive is his integration of AI, robotics, and advanced analytics into Atlas Surgical Group's clinical model. His published work and conference presentations position him not merely as an advocate for the ASC model but as a rigorous analyst of what it will take for surgery centres to lead on clinical quality, not merely compete on cost.

7. David J. Jacofsky

Founder and CEO | HOPCo and The CORE Institute | United States

Dr David Jacofsky founded Healthcare Outcomes Performance Company and The CORE Institute with a specific thesis: that value-based care requires fundamentally different organisational design, not merely different contracts. His parallel careers as an internationally recognised orthopedic surgeon and a healthcare system innovator give his thought leadership a dual credibility that most ASC executives cannot match. The CORE Institute has been ranked Arizona's number-one orthopedic group for eleven consecutive years.

Beyond his clinical work, Jacofsky is a prolific inventor with more than thirty patents, a board member of Cold Plasma Medical Technologies, and a prominent voice on the integration of artificial intelligence into ASC surgical practice. His rigour about what value-based transformation actually requires in outpatient surgical settings makes him one of the most substantive thinkers in the field.

8. Andrew Lovewell

Chief Executive Officer | Columbia Orthopaedic Group | United States

Andrew Lovewell represents a generation of ASC leaders who moved through the administrator pathway into CEO roles while developing a distinctly operational and evidence-based leadership style. He joined Columbia Orthopaedic Group in 2018 as administrator of its surgery center, which he led to the number-seven ranking on Newsweek's Best Ambulatory Surgery Centers list for 2021. His subsequent promotion to CEO has seen him navigate the strategic challenges of rising cost pressure, payer authorisation complexity, and high-acuity orthopaedic volume growth simultaneously.

Lovewell's thought leadership on payer contracting, orthopaedic procedure migration, and the operational prerequisites for managing complex joint and spine cases in the ASC setting has made him a sought-after conference speaker and regular contributor to ASC industry discourse. His 2024 recognition on the COMO Business Times "20 Under 40" list reflects a broader acknowledgement that the most forward-thinking ASC leadership is increasingly coming from practitioners.

9. Joan Dentler

Founder | Avanza Strategies | United States

Joan Dentler has spent more than thirty years at the intersection of strategy and operations in ambulatory surgery, founding Avanza Healthcare Strategies in 2007 and building it into one of the most respected advisory firms in the sector. Having consulted on more than 500 ASC projects representing more than 200 million dollars in revenue generation for clients, she brings empirical rigour to the question of what makes ASC development succeed or fail. Avanza is now part of the MedHQ group.

Her annual Hospital Leadership ASC Survey, which found in 2025 that 90 percent of hospitals planned to grow their ASC portfolios, has become one of the most cited industry intelligence sources in the sector. Dentler's particular contribution is on hospital-physician joint ventures, where her insight into the structural prerequisites for alignment, drawn from decades of hands-on consulting, stands apart from theoretical frameworks.

Category Two: Operational Excellence and the Administrator's Art

Day surgery is ultimately delivered by the people who run individual centres: administrators, directors of nursing, and clinical leaders who translate strategy into the daily reality of surgical care. This category celebrates those who are advancing the craft of ASC operations and sharing that knowledge generously with the broader community.

10. Tina DiMarino

Chief Executive Officer | Custom Surgical Partners | United States

Tina DiMarino co-founded Custom Surgical Partners in 2003 and has since overseen the development of more than 150 surgery centres. Her clinical background, beginning as a circulating nurse and progressing through surgical administration to a Doctor of Nursing Practice, a Master of Business Administration, and the prestigious Fellow of the American College of Healthcare Executives designation, gives her an unusually comprehensive view of what it takes to lead a surgery centre from clinical foundations to strategic heights.

Her Operationally Speaking for ASC Leadership podcast, launched to give administrators practical guidance on the full range of challenges they face, has become a valued resource in the community. In March 2026, Custom Surgical Partners merged with Ambulatory Strategies, Inc., expanding the company's national and international reach. DiMarino's articulation of the concept of "value engineering" in ASC design, building operationally and financially efficient facilities without compromising patient safety, has framed an important emerging conversation in the sector.

11. Greg DeConciliis

Administrator | Boston OutPatient Surgical Suites | United States

Greg DeConciliis has built a strong reputation as one of the most thoughtful ASC administrators in New England over a career spanning more than two decades. His work at Boston OutPatient Surgical Suites, a physician-owned, multi-specialty centre, reflects his commitment to developing the clinical and operational systems that allow a smaller independent centre to compete on quality and patient experience with larger network facilities.

A regular speaker at the Becker's Annual Meeting and other national conferences, DeConciliis has contributed meaningfully to the conversation on ASC quality benchmarking, physician engagement, and the operational readiness requirements for taking on higher-acuity procedures. His willingness to share what works, including the hard details of scheduling optimisation, supply chain management, and staff development, has made him a valued voice for administrators navigating similar terrain.

12. Geri Eaves

Administrator | Bone and Joint Institute of Tennessee Surgery Center | United States

Geri Eaves brings both clinical credibility and operational discipline to her role at Bone and Joint Institute of Tennessee Surgery Center. As a certified operating room nurse, certified surgery centre administrator, and regular Becker's conference faculty member, she sits at the intersection of clinical standards and operational performance that defines the best ASC leadership.

Her expertise in large joint arthroplasty programs, the highest-acuity and most operationally demanding speciality now moving into the ASC setting in large volume, has made her a practical authority on what staffing, protocols, and culture are required to safely and efficiently deliver outcomes that match or exceed the hospital setting. Her commitment to a patient experience culture, creating what she describes as a "Disney experience in healthcare," reflects an understanding that patient satisfaction is not a soft metric but a competitive and quality imperative.

13. Fawn Esser-Lipp

Executive Director | The Surgery Center LLC | United States

Fawn Esser-Lipp's combination of clinical nursing credentials, business education, and CASC certification reflects a career built on integrating clinical and operational excellence in the ambulatory setting. As Executive Director of The Surgery Center LLC, she has developed a leadership practice grounded in genuine engagement with both the clinical team and the surgeon partners whose satisfaction is foundational to ASC success.

A valued speaker at national ASC conferences on topics ranging from accreditation readiness to leadership development for ASC administrators, Esser-Lipp brings a practitioner's seriousness to the craft of running a surgery centre well. Her willingness to engage with the hardest aspects of the job, including managing difficult physician relationships, navigating staff retention challenges, and maintaining quality under payer pressure, makes her a trusted voice for administrators who want to learn from someone working through the same challenges.

14. Colleen Ramirez

Chief Administration Officer | Bone and Joint Surgery Center of Novi | United States

Colleen Ramirez's perspective on ASC leadership has been shaped by eighteen years in the industry, across a career that has consistently connected operational efficiency with a culture of care. As Chief Administration Officer of Bone and Joint Surgery Center of Novi, she has built a programme in large joint arthroplasty that is producing patient satisfaction scores and outcomes that regularly earn national recognition.

Her 2025 commentary on the inaugural year of mandatory OAS CAHPS patient satisfaction reporting for ASCs, noting that surgery centres are now effectively held to the same consumer standards as small independent hospitals, framed one of the most significant quality and culture challenges the industry has faced. Her specific focus on block utilisation, surgeon engagement, and the "Disney experience" in patient care reflects an administrator who is thinking simultaneously about clinical quality and competitive positioning.

15. Nick Latz

Former VP of Marketing | HST Pathways; Podcast Host | This Week in Surgery Centers | United States

Nick Latz built This Week in Surgery Centers into the most listened-to podcast dedicated to ambulatory surgery operations, creating a weekly platform that translated industry data, conference insights, and expert conversations into accessible intelligence for ASC administrators. Over several years at HST Pathways, he became one of the most recognisable communicators in the space, with a gift for making the complex elements of ASC operations understandable without sacrificing substance.

His mid-2025 announcement that he was transitioning from HST Pathways to focus on Next Girl Up, his nonprofit providing business education to high school girls, gave the ASC community a reminder that even the most committed industry voices carry motivations beyond the industry itself. The podcast continues to produce new episodes and remains an essential resource, and his contribution to building a culture of knowledge-sharing in the ASC space has been significant.

16. Jessica Bush

Founder | Real Change RN | United States

Jessica Bush's entry into the ASC thought leadership conversation comes with twenty-five years of nursing and leadership experience across perioperative, ambulatory, acute care, and medical-surgical specialties. She founded Real Change RN with a specific mission: improving the patient experience in ambulatory surgery centres through better leadership development for nurses and administrators. Her work on the human dimensions of ASC culture, how leaders show up for their teams, what patients actually remember from their day surgery experience, and how nursing leadership shapes both, distinguishes her from the operational and financial voices that dominate the ASC conversation.

Bush has received multiple awards for patient experience, process improvement, and change management in the ambulatory setting. Her contribution to the sector's understanding of the relationship between nursing leadership and OAS CAHPS patient satisfaction outcomes reflects a practitioner building meaningful bridges between culture and measurement.

17. Melissa Rice

Administrator | Loyola Ambulatory Surgery Center at Oakbrook Terrace | President | Illinois Ambulatory Surgery Center Association | United States

Melissa Rice brings a dual perspective to ASC leadership: she runs a complex, Trinity Health-affiliated ambulatory surgery centre while simultaneously serving as the voice of the Illinois ASC community as IASCA President. Her appearance on ASCA's Advancing Surgical Care Podcast on EHR integration gave the broader community a practical guide through one of the most operationally disruptive technology challenges facing surgery centres today.

Her background in managing the intersection of health system governance and independent ASC culture within the Trinity Health network gives her particular insight into the challenges that arise when large organisations and entrepreneurial surgery centre cultures must coexist. Her advocacy for the Illinois ASC community, combined with her hands-on operational role, makes her an unusually complete voice for what ASC leadership requires.

Category Three: Quality, Safety, and the Patient-Centred Standard

Patient safety and quality are the foundation of the ASC value proposition, and the people advancing the standards, measurement frameworks, and safety culture in this setting are doing some of the most important work in the field.

18. Nina Goins

Executive Director | ASC Quality Collaboration | United States

Nina Goins assumed the executive director role at the ASC Quality Collaboration in March 2025, succeeding Kathy Wilson. The ASCQC is the only independent, non-profit organisation exclusively dedicated to advancing patient safety and quality of care delivery in ambulatory surgery centres, and Goins' appointment marked a transition to new leadership at a moment when ASC quality reporting requirements, including the newly mandatory OAS CAHPS programme, were placing new demands on the sector.

Her engagement with CMS rulemaking, her work on the ASCQR programme through the Partnership for Quality Measurement, and her podcast appearances on the most complex quality improvement questions facing ASC operators have established her as the most credible emerging voice on ASC quality infrastructure.

19. Becky Ziegler-Otis

Assistant Executive Director | ASC Quality Collaboration | United States

Becky Ziegler-Otis has been one of the most practical and accessible voices on ASC quality improvement over her tenure at the ASC Quality Collaboration. Her three-part podcast series on quality assurance and performance improvement studies for the This Week in Surgery Centers audience distilled some of the most complex quality reporting requirements into guidance that administrators could actually act on. Her CASC credential and MHA background give her the dual clinical and administrative perspective that QAPI genuinely requires.

Her work represents a broader commitment at ASCQC to making quality improvement not a compliance exercise but a genuine instrument of clinical performance. The organisation's benchmarking surveys, which now draw data from nearly 300 participating ASCs, provide the evidence base from which her recommendations are drawn.

20. David Shapiro

Anesthesiologist; Board Member | ASCA Foundation; Board Member | AAAHC-International | United States

Dr David Shapiro occupies a unique position in the international ambulatory surgery quality infrastructure as a board member of both the ASCA Foundation and AAAHC-International (Acreditas Global), the accreditation body that operates across multiple countries. His three decades of experience as an anesthesiologist and perioperative manager, combined with his roles on the boards of ASCA and the International Association for Ambulatory Surgery, make him one of the most connected and globally informed figures in ASC quality and accreditation.

His specific contribution to the IAAS General Assembly has helped shape how ambulatory surgery quality standards are developed and promoted in countries where the ASC model is still emerging. His dual clinical and governance perspective gives his writing and advocacy on ASC safety a depth of practical authority.

21. Arnaldo Valedon

President | International Association for Ambulatory Surgery; Managing Partner | First Colonies Anesthesia Associates | United States

Dr Arnaldo Valedon assumed the presidency of the International Association for Ambulatory Surgery with a clear agenda: expand access to ambulatory surgery globally, particularly in regions where it remains underdeveloped, while ensuring that growth happens within a framework of patient safety and quality standards. His career began in anesthesia and perioperative management, and he served as medical director of multiple ambulatory surgery centres before his IAAS leadership elevated him to the global stage.

His IAAS presidential interview laid out a four-pillar vision: global expansion, capacity building in emerging markets, safety and quality promotion, and international collaboration. His United States-based career gives him practical authority on what ASC development actually requires, while his international role gives him a perspective that most US ASC leaders never develop.

22. Dare Meeks

Chief Nursing Officer | SCA Health | United States

Dare Meeks became Chief Nursing Officer at SCA Health in 2019 with a specific goal: to build psychological safety into the culture of more than 370 surgery centres in a way that was genuine rather than merely procedural. Her work on creating environments where nurses, technicians, and administrators feel not merely allowed but expected to speak up about safety concerns has produced measurable outcomes in both staff satisfaction and clinical quality.

Her work on eliminating agency nursing from SCA Health's operations, an industry-first achievement that saved millions of dollars while improving care consistency, demonstrated that workforce strategies built on genuine cultural investment can transform the economics of ASC operations. Her 2025 initiative on psychological safety, which Becker's described as SCA Health "hardwiring" psychological safety into ASC culture, has become a model for other large networks.

23. Kara Newbury

Chief Advocacy Officer | Ambulatory Surgery Center Association | United States

Kara Newbury serves as the policy and advocacy engine behind ASCA's public presence on Capitol Hill and with CMS. Her work on the 2025 and 2026 ASC payment rules, her leadership of ASCA's National Advocacy Day initiative, and her regular appearances on the Advancing Surgical Care Podcast have made her the most accessible expert voice on the regulatory dimensions of ASC leadership.

Her particular focus on cardiovascular ASC expansion, Medicare prior authorisation reforms, and site-neutral payment policy reflects an understanding that the biggest levers affecting ASC leadership are not internal to individual facilities but external in the policy environment. Leaders who follow Newbury's work are better positioned to anticipate regulatory changes and advocate effectively for their centres.

24. Gina Throneberry

Board Representative | ASCA Foundation; Board Member | ASC Quality Collaboration | United States

Gina Throneberry's career spans certified operating room nursing, ASC administration, and quality governance, giving her a perspective that bridges the clinical and organisational dimensions of ASC leadership. Her service on both the ASCA Foundation board and the ASC Quality Collaboration board connects her to the two most important quality and advocacy infrastructure organisations in the US ambulatory surgery sector.

Her credentials, including CNOR, MBA, and CASC, reflect the breadth of knowledge required to lead effectively in the ASC space. Her work on the technical expert committees that shape CMS quality reporting requirements gives the ASCQC a practitioner voice at the table where the standards are set.

25. Carol Hiatt

Independent ASC Consultant | United States

Carol Hiatt has more than thirty years of experience in the ASC industry and has become one of its most sought-after independent consultants on operating room utilisation, efficiency improvement, and the transition to higher-acuity surgical programmes. Her appearance on This Week in Surgery Centers, in which she shared practical strategies for improving OR utilisation in orthopaedic surgery centres, distilled decades of hands-on consulting into guidance that administrators could immediately apply.

Her particular expertise is in the foundational work of block scheduling, case turnaround time, staff allocation, and supply chain alignment that determines whether a surgery centre is operationally excellent or merely functional. Her thirty-year track record means her recommendations come from empirical evidence about what actually works, not from theoretical frameworks.

Category Four: Australian Day Surgery Leadership

Australia has one of the world's most developed private day surgery sectors, with more than 300 day hospitals operating under a dedicated licensing framework overseen by Day Hospitals Australia. The leaders in this category are shaping the standards, culture, and future of day surgery across Australia and the Asia-Pacific region.

26. Jane Griffiths

Chief Executive Officer | Day Hospitals Australia

Jane Griffiths has been the founding CEO of Day Hospitals Australia since 2014, building the organisation from its inception into the peak body for day hospitals across Australia. Her career in day surgery spans more than three decades, beginning as a perioperative nurse and moving through business management and clinical leadership roles at institutions including St John of God Hospital Subiaco. In 2021 she was appointed as one of three Australian representatives on the International Association of Ambulatory Surgery General Assembly, reflecting her standing as Australia's most credible voice in the global ambulatory surgery community.

Her leadership of Day Hospitals Australia has been instrumental in establishing the national conference as the primary professional development platform for day hospital practitioners in Australia, in engaging constructively with the Department of Health on standards and accreditation, and in building the international connections that allow Australian day surgery practice to benefit from global best practice.

27. The Hon. Associate Professor Anthony Lynham AO

Chairperson | Day Hospitals Australia; Practicing Maxillofacial Surgeon | Queensland

The Hon. Associate Professor Anthony Lynham AO brings an unusual combination of clinical and governance experience to the chairmanship of Day Hospitals Australia. A practicing maxillofacial surgeon with associate professor credentials, he was also a Queensland government minister, served as Board Chair for WorkCover Queensland, Gladstone Ports Corporation, and SEQWATER, and has contributed to multiple other public governance roles. Appointed Chair of Day Hospitals Australia in February 2025, he brings both a surgeon's understanding of what day hospitals require from the inside and a policy leader's grasp of how they operate within the broader health system.

His combination of clinical credibility and governance experience positions him well to advance Day Hospitals Australia's engagement with federal and state health policy in a period of significant healthcare reform.

28. David Badov

Executive Chairman | Centaurus Healthcare / Direct Endoscopy | Australia

Dr David Badov serves as Executive Chairman of the largest day hospital endoscopy group in Australia, Centaurus Healthcare's Direct Endoscopy Day Hospitals, which he has grown into a network of five day hospitals in Victoria while simultaneously maintaining his clinical role as a practicing gastroenterologist and his academic role as a Senior Lecturer at Monash University. His nearly two decades as Head of Gastroenterology at a major public hospital give him a clinical authority that many day hospital executives lack.

Badov's contribution to the Day Hospitals Australia Board, to which he was seconded in February 2025, reflects his vision that the challenges facing private day hospitals, funding, reform, and sustainability, are best addressed through constructive engagement with government. His integration of clinical practice, academic teaching, medical business entrepreneurship, and healthcare policy makes him one of the most multidimensional figures in Australian day surgery.

29. Tina Janamian

Group CEO | AGPAL Group of Companies; Adjunct Associate Professor | University of Queensland

Adj. A/Professor Tina Janamian leads one of Australia's most comprehensive healthcare accreditation and quality improvement organisations, the AGPAL Group, which includes Australian General Practice Accreditation Limited, Quality Innovation Performance, Care Opinion Australia, and CFEP Surveys. Her role as a Fellow of the International Society for Quality in Health Care and her membership of the ISQua Accreditation Council connect the Australian day hospital quality framework to global standards.

Her research and practice focus on healthcare system improvement and primary care reform gives her a perspective on quality and patient safety in day hospitals that is both evidence-based and internationally informed. Her contribution to the Day Hospitals Australia conference, combining accreditation expertise with a deep knowledge of how patient and provider feedback can drive quality improvement, reflected the breadth of her contribution to the Australian healthcare quality conversation.

30. Priscilla Guy

General Manager | Monash House Private Hospital | Australia

Priscilla Guy is leading a cultural transformation at Monash House Private Hospital that serves as a practical model for what values-driven day surgery leadership looks like. With more than twenty-five years of clinical experience as a Registered Nurse and seventeen years in nursing and operating theatre management, she completed a Master of Leadership at Deakin University with a specific research focus on empowering nursing leadership across all levels. Her thesis and her subsequent practice reflect a conviction that culture is not a soft consideration but the primary lever for both patient outcomes and operational excellence.

Her focus on building an agile, values-driven team that ensures every patient feels seen, heard, and cared for throughout their day-surgery journey has driven rapid growth at Monash House while maintaining exceptional patient experience metrics. She is a genuinely practitioner-led voice in Australian day surgery leadership.

31. Bianca Woodley

Director of Nursing | University of Western Australia Day Hospital | Australia

Bianca Woodley brings more than thirty-four years of perioperative nursing experience across public, private, inpatient, and day hospital settings in Australia and the United Kingdom to her role at the University of Western Australia Day Hospital. Her eight years as General Manager and Director of Nursing at RiverCity Private Hospital in Brisbane and her current role at a university-affiliated day hospital give her a perspective that spans the operational and academic dimensions of day surgery nursing leadership.

Her credentials as a National Safety and Quality Health Service Standards and ISO auditor, and her service on the Day Hospitals Australia Board since 2024, reflect a commitment to governance and quality improvement that extends beyond her individual facility.

32. Jennifer McNamara

Chief Executive Officer | personalEYES | Australia

Jennifer McNamara's leadership of personalEYES, a specialist ophthalmology day hospital network, has been characterised by a consistent focus on staff engagement as the primary driver of patient experience. With more than twenty years in the private health sector and fifteen years in leadership roles, she has received recognition including multiple Employer of Choice, Excellence in Innovation, and Excellence in Sustainability awards during her tenure at Gosford Private Hospital.

Her conviction that a positive patient experience is the direct result of strong organisational culture, and that building that culture requires genuine engagement with the team rather than policy impositions from above, reflects a leadership philosophy that is both practically grounded and consistent with the research evidence on what drives sustainable clinical quality. She is one of Australia's most experienced day surgery CEOs.

33. Paul Fenton

Chief Executive Officer | Icon Cancer Centre Australia and New Zealand

Paul Fenton leads a network of more than forty cancer centres across Australia and New Zealand, including fifteen centres operating under a day hospital licence. A qualified radiation therapist by clinical background, he brings frontline clinical experience to an executive leadership role that requires simultaneously managing strategic growth, health system partnerships, and a commitment to expanding access for patients in regional and outer metropolitan areas.

His twelve new cancer centre openings since 2020, with a particular focus on underserved geographic areas, reflect an understanding of day hospital leadership that goes beyond operational efficiency to include health equity. His advocacy for collaboration between government, health services, and community organisations to improve care pathways gives his leadership a population health dimension.

34. Nick Coatsworth

Health Reform Ambassador | Patients Australia; Clinical Associate Professor | Australian National University

Dr Nick Coatsworth is among Australia's most prominent public medical voices, having served as Deputy Chief Medical Officer of Australia during the COVID-19 pandemic before transitioning to academic and advocacy roles. His current focus on health system reform and private hospital sustainability, including the sustainability of day hospitals, positions him as one of the most credible voices advocating for the structural conditions that allow day hospitals to thrive.

His appointment as Health Reform Ambassador at Patients Australia and his ongoing role as a Clinical Associate Professor at ANU Medical School reflect a career committed to translating clinical knowledge into policy insight. His 2025 Day Hospitals Australia conference presentation brought a strategic perspective on reform that is rarely available from someone with his combination of frontline and policy credentials.

35. Tim Traill

Managing Director | Hobart Eye Surgeons Day Surgery | Australia

Tim Traill's leadership of Hobart Eye Surgeons Day Surgery, which he launched alongside his existing role at Hobart Eye Surgeons, reflects an emerging group of Australian day hospital leaders who are building new facilities from the ground up as instruments of genuine healthcare system improvement. His background in law and healthcare administration, combined with his service as a board member of Day Hospitals Australia and his role as TAS Member Director, gives him both an operator's and a governance voice in the national day surgery conversation.

His advocacy for the unique role of day hospitals in the sustainability of the Australian healthcare system, and his commitment to building collaborative models between day hospitals and overnight facilities, reflects a systemic rather than merely competitive view of the sector's role in healthcare delivery.

36. Rodney Fox

Chief Financial Officer | SMS Healthcare; Treasurer | Day Hospitals Australia | Australia

Rodney Fox brings more than twenty years of healthcare sector financial leadership to his roles as CFO of SMS Healthcare and Treasurer of Day Hospitals Australia. His previous roles as General Manager of Day Surgeries at Vision Eye Institute and CFO at Nexus Hospitals give him deep practical knowledge of the financial challenges unique to day hospital operations, including health fund negotiations, capacity planning, and the cost structure differences that separate day hospitals from overnight facilities.

As Day Hospitals Australia's Treasurer since 2019 and its appointed representative on the ACSQHC Private Sector Committee, he is one of the most consistent voices ensuring that the financial sustainability of day hospitals is represented in regulatory and accreditation conversations. His MBA from the Australian Graduate School of Management and his chartered accountancy give his financial analysis a rigour that is valuable in a sector where the financial case for day surgery is constantly under scrutiny.

Category Five: UK and International Voices

Day surgery has deep roots in the United Kingdom through the British Association of Day Surgery, and internationally through the International Association for Ambulatory Surgery. The leaders in this category are advancing the field from outside the US and Australia.

37. Karen Harries

President | British Association of Day Surgery; Lead Nurse for Day Surgery and Pre-operative Assessment | King's College Hospital NHS Foundation Trust | United Kingdom

Karen Harries assumed the presidency of the British Association of Day Surgery in June 2025 after more than seven years on the BADS Council. An Australian-trained nurse who has been in the UK since 1995, she leads one of the highest-profile day surgery services in the NHS at King's College Hospital NHS Foundation Trust, and her combination of frontline nursing leadership and national advocacy roles makes her the most important nursing voice in UK day surgery at the current moment.

Her focus on the interdisciplinary dimensions of day surgery quality, ensuring that nursing, surgical, and anaesthetic teams work from shared standards and shared safety frameworks, reflects an understanding that excellence in day surgery is fundamentally a team product rather than an individual achievement.

38. David Bunting

Consultant Surgeon | NHS; Former President | British Association of Day Surgery | United Kingdom

David Bunting served as President of the British Association of Day Surgery and built on the strong foundations left by his predecessor Jo Marsden to advance BADS's partnerships with NHS England and GIRFT. His presidential message emphasised that day surgery is not merely a cost-efficiency measure but one of the most important tools available to address the NHS's elective waiting list backlog, a framing that positioned day surgery as a systemic solution rather than a departmental niche.

His work in growing BADS membership and building collaborative relationships with surgical specialty societies reflected a leadership style focused on the long-term institutional health of the association as much as its immediate advocacy agenda.

39. Jo Marsden

Consultant Breast Surgeon | St Bartholomew's Hospital; Former President | British Association of Day Surgery | United Kingdom

Jo Marsden's presidential tenure at BADS was marked by the forging of the most significant institutional partnerships in the organisation's recent history, most notably with GIRFT and NHS England's Model Health System. Her work on tightening BADS's governance structures and on building its digital and social media presence gave the organisation a more modern and outward-facing identity.

As a consultant breast surgeon, Marsden's clinical credibility in a surgical specialty that has been at the forefront of day case innovation, with day case mastectomy and breast reconstruction increasingly being performed without overnight admission, gives her thought leadership in day surgery an empirical grounding in what is clinically possible when the right leadership, pathways, and culture are in place.

40. Doug McWhinnie

Post-Graduate Dean of Medicine and Surgery | University of Buckingham; Consultant Surgeon | Milton Keynes University Hospital | United Kingdom

Doug McWhinnie's career in day surgery spans more than three decades, from developing one of the first dedicated 23-hour units in the UK in the late 1990s to co-editing Day Case Surgery (Oxford Specialist Handbooks, Oxford University Press, 2012) with Ian Jackson and Ian Smith, the definitive clinical and operational reference for practitioners in the UK and internationally. His role as Surgical Editor-in-Chief of the journal Ambulatory Surgery and his membership of the IAAS Executive Council have made him a central figure in the global academic community advancing day surgery knowledge.

His interest in patient safety and the design of ambulatory pathways reflects a conviction that the quality of day surgery depends not on individual clinical decisions but on the design of the systems within which those decisions are made. His over 100 publications on patient safety, ambulatory surgery, and related topics represent one of the most substantial individual academic contributions to the evidence base for the field.

41. Xavier Falieres

Perioperative Anesthesiologist | Albert Schweitzer Hospital; President | Dutch Society for Ambulatory Care; Board Member | International Association for Ambulatory Surgery | Netherlands

Xavier Falieres brings a European and international perspective to ambulatory surgery leadership that is rare among those who speak primarily to English-language audiences. His twelve years as medical director of an operating theatre, his current service on the medical board of the Helene Schweitzer Clinic's ambulatory and short-stay surgery unit, and his role as president of the Dutch Society for Ambulatory Care and board member of the IAAS give him a vantage point that spans clinical management, health system governance, and international policy.

His extensive international teaching experience, particularly across Asian healthcare systems, reflects a commitment to the IAAS's core mission of expanding access to high-quality ambulatory surgery in regions where it remains underdeveloped. His technical expertise in multimodal anesthesia and regional techniques is directly relevant to the clinical safety questions that day surgery leaders everywhere must address.

42. Klaus-Martin Schulte

Chair of Surgery | Australian National University | Australia

Professor Klaus-Martin Schulte represents the increasingly global nature of surgical leadership, having built his career across the United Kingdom and Australia. As Chair of Surgery at the Australian National University in Canberra, he now contributes both to Australian surgical education and to international day surgery conversations through bodies including the British Association of Day Surgery, where his endocrine surgery work has demonstrated the expanding clinical reach of the day case model.

His contribution to the BADS community, specifically on day case endocrine surgery, helped establish evidence-based pathways for complex endocrine procedures that were once considered unsuitable for ambulatory care. His academic leadership and research publication in high-impact surgical journals give his thought leadership a rigour that bridges clinical innovation and policy advocacy.

43. Beth LaBouyer

Former Executive Director | California Ambulatory Surgery Association | United States

Beth LaBouyer spent twenty-one years building the California Ambulatory Surgery Association into one of the premier state ASC associations in the United States before her retirement at the end of 2025. Her journey from bedside nursing through ASC administration to executive director of a major advocacy body represents the full arc of a career in ambulatory surgery, and the organisation she built, with its advocacy infrastructure, educational programmes, and legislative relationships, has shaped the regulatory environment for ASCs in the largest US state.

Her final ASCA podcast appearance, reflecting on her tenure and the future challenges of ASC advocacy, was widely shared within the community as a testament to what sustained institutional leadership in a specialist sector can achieve. Her legacy at CASA is now being carried forward by her successor Karen Reiter, but LaBouyer's contribution to California and national ASC advocacy infrastructure spans decades.

44. Karen Reiter

Executive Director | California Ambulatory Surgery Association | United States

Karen Reiter was appointed Executive Director of the California Ambulatory Surgery Association in late 2025, succeeding Beth LaBouyer. California's ASC community, with 894 surgery centres representing more than a sixth of all Medicare-certified ASCs nationally, faces some of the most complex regulatory and payer challenges in the country.

Her appointment at a moment of significant change, including new prior authorisation requirements, OAS CAHPS mandates, and ongoing battles over Medicaid reimbursement for implant cases, positions her as one of the most important emerging voices in state-level ASC advocacy. Her leadership of CASA's Administrator Mastery Series, a monthly programme designed to strengthen ASC leadership practice across California, reflects a commitment to developing the next generation of ASC leaders.

Category Six: Consultants, Educators, and the Next Generation

The leaders in this category are building the intellectual and practical infrastructure of day surgery leadership: the consultants who are transferring knowledge at scale, the educators who are developing the next generation, the accreditation experts who are raising standards, and the practitioners who are creating the resources the broader community depends on.

45. Kathy W. Beydler

Principal Consultant | Whitman Partners | United States

Kathy Beydler's career in ambulatory surgery encompasses clinical nursing, ASC administration, accreditation surveying, consulting, and keynote speaking, a breadth that reflects the multiple domains of knowledge required to lead effectively in the day surgery setting. As principal consultant at Whitman Partners, she has guided surgery centres through accreditation preparation, operational improvement, and leadership development challenges for many years.

Her contribution to Outpatient Surgery Magazine's "Day in the Life of an Administrator" series gave the sector an unusually candid and generously shared account of what ambulatory surgery leadership actually feels like from the inside. Her keynote speaking work distils decades of practical experience into guidance that ASC leaders at every career stage can act on.

46. Sandra Jones

Founder | Ambulatory Strategies Inc | United States

Sandra Jones founded Ambulatory Strategies Inc as a consultancy dedicated to regulatory compliance, accreditation readiness, and operational performance for ambulatory surgery centres. Her March 2026 merger with Custom Surgical Partners under Tina DiMarino's leadership reflected a recognition that the most complex challenges in ASC leadership, particularly around regulatory expectations and leadership accountability, require teams with deep combined expertise.

Jones's contribution to the ASC consulting community over many years, particularly in the areas of compliance, QAPI implementation, and leadership development, has helped hundreds of centres build the systems and cultures required for accreditation and sustained performance. Her founding conviction, that every decision must be grounded in a patient-centric focus, reflects the values orientation that characterises the best ASC consulting practice.

47. Margaret Banks

Director | Australian Commission on Safety and Quality in Health Care | Australia

Margaret Banks has been the most consistent government voice for the application of the National Safety and Quality Health Service Standards to day hospitals in Australia since joining the ACSQHC in 2006. Her work on the development of the NSQHS Standards and the systematic accreditation reform that followed has shaped the regulatory framework within which every day hospital in Australia operates. Before her ACSQHC role, she worked with the Department of Health and Ageing and as a physiotherapist in both Australia and Papua New Guinea.

Her Adjunct Professorship at the University of Technology Sydney and her service on the ACSQHC Private Sector Committee, where Day Hospitals Australia holds external representation, give her work a connection to both academic evidence and frontline practice that is rare in regulatory roles.

48. David Ornelas

Chief Executive Officer | Texas Health Surgery Center Fort Worth Midtown (SCA Health) | United States

David Ornelas brings an unusual qualification profile to ASC leadership: a Juris Doctor, a registered nursing background, and the CASC credential, together with extensive state association governance experience including the presidency of the Colorado Ambulatory Surgery Center Association from 2020 to 2022. His legal training gives him a perspective on the regulatory and policy dimensions of ASC leadership that most administrators lack, and his healthcare law focus has made him a resource for understanding the implications of Anti-Kickback Statute guidance, ownership transfer policy, and succession planning.

His active involvement in both CASCA and CASPA government affairs committees over more than a decade reflects a commitment to the advocacy infrastructure that shapes the environment in which all ASC leaders operate. His transition in 2025 to his current CEO role at Texas Health Surgery Center Fort Worth Midtown, an SCA Health facility, represents a significant step in a career that has consistently combined frontline leadership with sector-wide governance.

49. Cindy Young

Program Manager Surgical Services | Parkland Health Center; Former Board Member | Missouri Ambulatory Surgery Center Association | United States

Cindy Young's commitment to the ambulatory surgery community extends beyond her facility leadership to active service on the Missouri ASC Association Board, where she is recognised by peers as a servant-leader who consistently extends knowledge and mentorship to new ASC administrators. Her credentials, CASC and CAIP, alongside her nursing and business education, reflect the multi-dimensional preparation that effective ASC administration requires.

Her peer recognition, specifically her colleagues' description of her as a leader who always reaches out to new ASC Administrators in an attempt to assist in any way possible, captures the spirit of this category. She is a practitioner who gives back, and her contribution to the broader community of ambulatory surgery leadership extends well beyond her organisational role.

50. Jonno White

Certified Working Genius Facilitator; Leadership Consultant; Bestselling Author | Clarity Group Global | Australia

The voices on this list are the thinkers shaping day surgery leadership at the industry level. Jonno White is the practitioner you bring in when you are ready to act on what they are saying at the team level. As the bestselling author of Step Up or Step Out, which has sold over 10,000 copies globally, a Certified Working Genius Facilitator, and a leadership consultant who works with healthcare organisations, schools, corporates, and nonprofits around the world, Jonno works with surgery centre leadership teams on the precise challenges that underpin operational performance: team culture, communication breakdowns, conflict, accountability, and what it means to lead people effectively in high-pressure clinical environments.

Day surgery teams operate in some of the most compressed and demanding interpersonal environments in healthcare. Jonno's workshops, facilitated offsites, and keynote sessions give day surgery leadership teams practical tools for the hardest conversations and the most important team decisions. Email jonno@consultclarity.org. International travel is often far more affordable than clients expect.

Notable Voices We Almost Included

Several people were seriously considered for this list but did not make the final fifty. Brené Brown, Adam Grant, and Simon Sinek would appear on most broad leadership lists, and their work on vulnerability, psychological safety, and purpose is deeply relevant to any conversation about surgical team culture. We deliberately moved past these household names to surface voices who are specifically embedded in and actively shaping the day surgery field.

Among those with strong ambulatory surgery credentials who were considered, Naresh Row, the founder of the Indian Association of Day Surgery and Director of The One Day Surgery Centre in Mumbai, is one of the most significant international voices in expanding ambulatory care in the Asia-Pacific region, and would be a strong addition to a future version of this list. Several others are primarily active through their organisations' channels rather than through personal thought leadership, or have recently changed roles in ways that made their current institutional affiliation uncertain at the time this research was completed. The field is growing rapidly, and many voices who are not yet prominent will undoubtedly belong on a future version of this list.

Common Mistakes to Avoid

The most common mistake day surgery leaders make when engaging with thought leadership in their field is treating it as an information source rather than a conversation partner. Reading an article from one of the fifty people on this list and filing it away as useful data is not thought leadership engagement. The most valuable exchanges happen when a leader responds publicly to what they read, shares a specific clinical or operational insight that adds to the conversation, and builds the kind of reciprocal professional relationship that thought leadership is designed to produce.

A second mistake is equating seniority with insight. Some of the sharpest operational thinking in day surgery comes from administrators running single-facility centres who are experimenting with scheduling protocols, staffing models, and patient experience initiatives without the resources of a network behind them. The executives who lead multi-facility organisations have built something impressive, but the practitioner wisdom of someone who has run a hundred and fifty surgical days at a single centre often contains lessons that are more practically applicable than the strategic frameworks articulated at the enterprise level. Seek out both.

A third mistake is assuming that all the important day surgery thought leadership comes from the United States. The ASC model is a US invention and the US has the most developed infrastructure for it, but the UK's BADS, Australia's Day Hospitals Australia, and the IAAS global network have produced rigorous, evidence-based thinking on day surgery pathway design, quality standards, and leadership practice that is directly applicable to any surgery centre setting. The international voices on this list are not supplementary reading. They are often the most original thinkers because they have built their practice from first principles rather than inheriting a well-developed system.

A fourth mistake is waiting until there is a crisis before engaging with thought leadership. The leaders who consistently outperform their peers in patient safety, staff satisfaction, and financial sustainability do so because they are continuously learning and adjusting. The people on this list are publicly sharing the problems they are still working on, alongside the solutions they have found.

Finally, do not confuse scale with excellence. Some of the most impressive day surgery leadership in the world happens in facilities that most people outside the local community have never heard of. What distinguishes excellent day surgery leadership is not the size of the operation but the rigour of its standards, the quality of its culture, and the consistency of its patient outcomes.

Implementation Guide: Taking Action

Building a genuine learning practice around day surgery thought leadership takes deliberate effort but produces compounding returns. The starting point is following the people on this list on LinkedIn, which remains the primary professional platform for the ambulatory surgery community, and engaging with their posts rather than merely consuming them. Following is passive; commenting with a specific clinical or operational insight adds to the conversation and builds the professional relationships that thought leadership is designed to enable.

The second step is subscribing to the Advancing Surgical Care Podcast from ASCA, the This Week in Surgery Centers podcast from HST Pathways, and the Operationally Speaking podcast from Custom Surgical Partners. These three programmes collectively cover the full range of US ASC operational and policy challenges. For Australian practitioners, the Day Hospitals Australia Annual Conference is the most concentrated source of sector-specific thought leadership available.

Third, engage with the written resources that the people on this list produce. Doug McWhinnie's Day Case Surgery (Oxford Specialist Handbooks) and Shakeel Ahmed's nine books on ambulatory surgery are the most comprehensive written references available. The ASC Quality Collaboration's annual report and benchmarking data provide the empirical foundation for quality improvement conversations.

Fourth, attend the annual conferences of the professional bodies relevant to your geography. ASCA's annual conference in the United States, the BADS annual conference in the UK, and the Day Hospitals Australia National Conference in Australia are each the most concentrated available exposure to peer learning and emerging clinical pathways. The IAAS International Congress, held biennially, provides the international integration point.

Finally, build the internal learning infrastructure that turns individual thought leadership consumption into organisational improvement. The most effective approach is designating time at each team meeting for a member to share one insight from outside the facility, creating a standard agenda item for "what we read or heard this week" that normalises continuous learning as a team practice rather than an individual indulgence.

Jonno White works with surgery centre leadership teams on the communication and culture foundations that make this kind of learning-oriented team culture possible. If your team is technically excellent but struggling with the interpersonal and cultural dimensions of high-performance day surgery leadership, email jonno@consultclarity.org. Many organisations find that international travel is far more affordable than expected when the returns in team performance are considered.

Frequently Asked Questions

What does "day surgery" mean and how is it different from hospital surgery?

Day surgery refers to planned surgical procedures in which the patient arrives, has the procedure completed, and is discharged home on the same day without an overnight hospital admission. It is also known as ambulatory surgery, same-day surgery, and day case surgery depending on geography. The defining characteristic is the absence of an overnight stay, made possible by advances in anaesthesia, minimally invasive surgical techniques, and enhanced recovery protocols that have dramatically shortened the post-procedural period required before safe discharge.

How was this list compiled?

This directory was compiled through an examination of each person's credentials, their geographic and disciplinary contribution to the day surgery and ambulatory surgery leadership conversation, and the quality and specificity of what they have published, built, said, or done that demonstrates genuine leadership in the field. The list spans six countries and multiple disciplines, from nursing and anaesthesia to healthcare policy, finance, and operations consulting, with a deliberate effort to surface voices active in Australia, the United Kingdom, and the international IAAS community alongside the well-developed US ASC ecosystem.

What are the biggest challenges facing day surgery leaders in 2026?

The most pressing challenges identified by leaders across the field include the successful integration of higher-acuity procedures that have migrated from the inpatient setting, workforce shortages particularly in nursing and anaesthesia, reimbursement pressures that are not keeping pace with operating costs, the implementation of mandatory patient satisfaction reporting programmes, and the cultural and leadership development required to ensure that rapid growth in the sector does not dilute the quality and patient-centredness that distinguish day surgery at its best.

Is day surgery safe for complex or high-acuity procedures?

Research consistently demonstrates that when appropriate patient selection, pre-operative assessment, and clinical protocols are in place, a broad and expanding range of procedures can be performed safely in the ambulatory setting. The migration of total joint replacements, cardiovascular procedures, and spine surgery into ASCs has been accompanied by outcome data showing equivalent or superior results compared to inpatient settings for appropriately selected patients.

Can I hire someone to facilitate leadership workshops or team development sessions for my day surgery leadership team?

Yes. Jonno White, Certified Working Genius Facilitator and bestselling author of Step Up or Step Out with over 10,000 copies sold globally, works with healthcare leadership teams on the communication, culture, and team dynamics challenges that underpin clinical and operational performance. Whether your team needs a structured offsite, a Working Genius assessment and debrief, or a keynote for your conference, Jonno works with teams around the world. Email jonno@consultclarity.org. International travel is often far more affordable than clients expect.

Why do some day surgery centres consistently outperform on both quality and financial metrics?

Research and practitioner experience consistently point to the same answer: culture. Centres where staff feel psychologically safe to raise concerns, where surgeon relationships are built on respect and shared standards rather than hierarchical deference, where leadership is visible and values-driven, and where continuous learning is a team practice rather than a compliance exercise consistently outperform on every metric that matters, from patient satisfaction to error rates to staff retention.

Final Thoughts

The fifty people on this list share a conviction that the day surgery model, when led well, is not merely a more efficient way to deliver surgical care but a better way. The compressed, focused, protocol-driven environment of a well-run surgery centre, where every patient is known by name, where the team works together across a bounded set of procedures and pathways, and where the feedback between what leaders decide and what patients experience is immediate and visible, creates the conditions for some of the highest-quality healthcare anywhere.

The leaders advancing this model are doing so in environments that are simultaneously exciting and demanding. The shift of higher-acuity procedures into the ASC setting is creating opportunities and obligations simultaneously. The workforce challenges are real. The reimbursement pressures are persistent. The regulatory requirements are growing. And yet the thought leaders in this space keep sharing what they know, building the frameworks, advocating for the policy, and demonstrating through daily practice that excellent day surgery leadership is achievable.

If you lead a day surgery or ambulatory surgery centre, or aspire to, the people on this list are the community you want to be part of. Follow them, engage with their work, attend their conferences, and bring what you learn back to your team.

For more on the leadership frameworks that underpin the team culture and communication practices of high-performing healthcare teams, read my blog post on thought leaders in hospital leadership at https://www.consultclarity.org/post/thought-leaders-hospital-leadership-global.

Jonno White, bestselling author of Step Up or Step Out with over 10,000 copies sold globally and Certified Working Genius Facilitator, works with leadership teams across healthcare, education, and corporate sectors on the team dynamics, communication, and cultural challenges that underlie performance. When you are ready to invest in the team dimensions of your day surgery leadership, email jonno@consultclarity.org.

About the Author

Jonno White is a Certified Working Genius Facilitator, bestselling author, and leadership consultant who has worked with schools, corporates, and nonprofits across the UK, India, Australia, Canada, Mongolia, New Zealand, Romania, Singapore, South Africa, USA, Finland, Namibia, and more. His book Step Up or Step Out has sold over 10,000 copies globally, and his podcast The Leadership Conversations has featured 230+ episodes reaching listeners in 150+ countries. Jonno founded The 7 Questions Movement with 6,000+ participating leaders and achieved a 93.75% satisfaction rating for his Working Genius masterclass at the ASBA 2025 National Conference. Based in Brisbane, Australia, Jonno works globally and regularly travels for speaking and facilitation engagements. Organisations consistently find that international travel is far more affordable than expected.

To book Jonno for your next keynote, workshop, or facilitation session, email jonno@consultclarity.org.

Next Read

35 Essential Thought Leaders in Hospital Leadership Globally (2026)

Hospital leadership is arguably the most complex leadership challenge on the planet. Few other settings demand that leaders simultaneously manage clinical safety, workforce wellbeing, financial sustainability, technological transformation, regulatory compliance, and community health outcomes, all while operating around the clock with life and death consequences for every decision. If you have been searching for the best thought leaders globally in hospital leadership, you have probably noticed that most lists are either US-centric, focused narrowly on one discipline, or so broad that they cover healthcare generally without addressing the specific challenges of leading a hospital or health system.

Keep reading: https://www.consultclarity.org/post/thought-leaders-hospital-leadership-global