Healthcare Insights
Patient care and procedure trends in cardiology by type of facility
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), heart disease is the leading cause of death for men, women, and most racial and ethnic groups in the United States. Additionally, the CDC reports heart disease costs the United States about $251 billion each year, along with $156 billion in lost productivity. With these staggering statistics, it’s clear that cardiac care is an essential service. Many healthcare provider organizations are focused on investing in cardiology service line growth and optimizing care for this population. To make the right decisions for your organization, staying on top of the top trends in cardiology is key.
Trends in cardiology: Five-year procedure growth by facility type
Using data from the Definitive Healthcare Atlas All-Payor Claims product, we examined growth in cardiology procedures from 2018 to 2023. Understanding trends in procedures is important for healthcare provider organizations with strategic initiatives including resource allocation, financial planning, improving quality of care, optimizing locations and services, and informing investments.
The following table lists the five-year growth in cardiology procedures across different types of healthcare organizations. Cardiology procedures are defined as those falling under Definitive Healthcare’s “Surgery - Cardiovascular System” subcategory.
| Firm type | Procedure growth | Market share | Market share change | Explore dataset |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| ALL | -4.20% | 100.00% | 0.00% | Explore |
| Hospital | -6.32% | 73.21% | -1.65% | Explore |
| Physician Group | -8.58% | 21.34% | -1.02% | Explore |
| Ambulatory Surgery Center | 105.33% | 4.87% | 2.60% | Explore |
Fig. 1 Analysis of data from the Definitive Healthcare Atlas All-Payor Claims product representing physician-to-physician referral claims for January 2018 – December 2023. Claims data is sourced from multiple medical claims clearinghouses in the United States and updated monthly. Data accessed July 2025.
Cardiology care shifts away from hospitals
As depicted in the table above, ambulatory surgery centers experienced the greatest increase in both cardiology procedure volume and market share during the period examined.
This is consistent with the macro trend of patient care shifting to outpatient settings. Ambulatory care can have several benefits for patients, payors, and providers, including faster access, shorter stays, and lower costs. There is also more opportunity for shared-equity ownership models for physicians in ambulatory sites.
While hospitals maintain the greatest market share, they lost more than 1.6% of their share and saw a 6.3% dip in procedure volume from 2018 to 2023, highlighting the dominant—but slowly diminishing— position held by traditional care facilities in the cardiology market. Physician groups lost more than 8% in procedure volume and about 1% of market share.
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