The shift from inpatient to outpatient surgery accelerated in the 1980's, growing at a rate of more than 10 percent a year.

Many hospitals are shifting resources to cope with the increasing demand for outpatient surgery.

Another 635,000 are seen as outpatients (including outpatient surgery and 75,000 emergency patients).

The surgery may be done as outpatient surgery or, sometimes, during an overnight hospital stay.

The $16 million expansion of outpatient surgery and the emergency department was completed in the fall of 2011.

In theory, outpatient surgery and other procedures save money because patients avoid costly hospital stays.

This is despite the fact that most of what happens could be done in an outpatient surgery closer to the patients home.

When the bones have solidified into place, the bar is removed through outpatient surgery.

Although outpatient surgery has become more common, some patients still "prefer to recover in the hospital milieu," he said.

You may have outpatient surgery, which means you would go home the same day.