Business Data & Benchmarks · United States
Ambulatory Surgical and Emergency Center Revenue Benchmark
Freestanding facilities performing same-day surgical procedures or emergency care outside a hospital.
Average Surgical and Emergency Center Revenue per Year 2022 Economic Census
The 2022 Economic Census counts every freestanding surgical or emergency center with paid employees and publishes their combined annual receipts. Dividing one by the other gives the average annual revenue per employer establishment below.
≈$4,356,000 /year
Average annual gross revenue per employer establishment
10,119
Employer establishments in the United States, 2022
as published $44.1 billion
Combined annual gross revenue of employer establishments, 2022
How this is calculated: about $44.1 billion in combined annual receipts divided by 10,119 employer establishments works out to an average annual revenue of $4,356,000 per employer establishment. Facility fees, not surgeon fees, are what most of these centers bill, and the two are often billed separately.
Scope: Freestanding Ambulatory Surgical and Emergency Centers, NAICS 621493. Classified separately in group 6214: 621410 Family Planning Centers; 621420 Outpatient Mental Health and Substance Abuse Centers; 621491 HMO Medical Centers, and 2 further codes. Nothing outside that code is counted on this page.
Source US Census Bureau, 2022 Economic Census, Summary Statistics (ECNBASIC): ESTAB, RCPTOT and PAYANN by NAICS · Vintage 2022 Economic Census · Calculation BusinessNES · Accessed July 2026
Employer Establishments at Year Five Endpoint only
Outpatient Care Centers, NAICS 6214, the 2018 starting count compared with the count of five-year-old establishments in 2023.
81.9%the year-five count as a share of the starting count
Across the 2014 to 2018 cohorts, five-year results ranged from 65.3 to 81.9 percent. This benchmark covers Outpatient Care Centers, NAICS 6214, as a whole, and this category accounts for 10,119 of the 57,177 employer establishments in it. A count by age is not a survival rate, because the figures compare two headcounts rather than follow one set of businesses.
Payroll as a Share of Revenue Official data
Payroll divided by receipts, both as published for the same year.
| Measure | Value |
|---|---|
| Annual payroll share of receipts, United States | ≈27% |
Payroll share of receipts, Freestanding Ambulatory Surgical and Emergency Centers, United States, 2022 Economic Census.
Approximately 27.0 percent of every revenue dollar goes to annual payroll. Many physicians working in these centers bill independently rather than appearing on the facility payroll, so the ratio describes facility staffing rather than the whole clinical team.
Payroll here excludes benefits, employer taxes and owner compensation, and it excludes implants, devices and supplies, which are a large part of what a surgical center buys.
Business Scale and Ownership Structure Official data
How large the average establishment is, and whether the population is independent operators or multi-site companies.
| Measure | Value |
|---|---|
| Paid employees per employer establishment | 20.1 |
| Employer establishments per firm | 1.66 |
Scale and ownership, Freestanding Ambulatory Surgical and Emergency Centers, United States, 2022 Economic Census.
The average establishment employed about 20.1 people, and the industry counted 1.7 employer establishments per firm.
These are arithmetic industry averages. They state the size of the average establishment and show that multi-establishment ownership exists. They do not show the distribution of business sizes and they do not measure market concentration.
Questions Worth Asking BusinessNES analysis
Ambulatory Surgical and Emergency Center: what the average leaves out.
Before you rely on this benchmark
- What is the case mix? Procedure mix drives both the facility fee and the supply cost, and two centers with identical revenue can differ entirely in what they do.
- Who owns the center? Physician ownership, hospital partnership and independent operation create different referral patterns and different governance.
- What do implants and devices cost per case? In several specialties the device can be the largest single cost of a procedure and it is invisible in a payroll ratio.
- How dependent is the center on a few surgeons? Volume follows the surgeons who bring cases, and a departure can remove a large share of throughput without warning.
- How is out of network billing handled? Payment terms differ sharply between contracted and non-contracted payers, and a center relying on the latter carries collection risk that never shows in a revenue figure.
- What is the case cancellation rate? A canceled case leaves staffed theatre time unused, and same-day cancellations are rarely backfilled.
- How much of the category is emergency rather than surgical care? NAICS 621493 counts freestanding emergency centers alongside surgical centers, and they run on different economics: unscheduled arrivals, around-the-clock staffing and payer disputes over facility fees rather than a planned case list.
Explore More on BusinessNES
Neighbouring benchmark pages built from the same verified data, plus BusinessNES guides on the same subject.
Data Source Notice
This product uses the Census Bureau Data API but is not endorsed or certified by the Census Bureau.
Figures above are from the 2022 Economic Census reference year, released by the Census Bureau in 2024 and 2025; markets have moved since.
Sources and Methodology
Revenue, establishment counts, payroll, employment and firm counts on this page come from the 2022 Economic Census, Summary Statistics, published by the US Census Bureau. Averages and shares are BusinessNES calculations from those published totals, and each one names the two figures it divides.
The Census counts employer establishments, meaning each licensed facility with paid staff rather than each operator or physician group.