I’m John Goehle. Most of my career has been spent in and around ambulatory surgery centers — the outpatient facilities where a great deal of American surgery now happens. I’ve worked as an administrator and as a specialist in the parts of the business that keep a center safe and sound: regulatory compliance, accreditation and survey readiness, governance, and finance. With an MBA and the CASC credential behind me, I eventually turned that experience into a way of helping many centers rather than just one.
Today that help takes a few different forms, and this site exists mainly to keep them straight.
The professional work
Through Ambulatory Healthcare Strategies I advise surgery centers directly — the hands-on work of keeping a center compliant, well-governed, and financially healthy. Through Eden Group Development, Inc., my media company, I reach a much wider audience with the same knowledge. Eden Group is the home for The ASC Podcast with John Goehle, now past 280 episodes; for ASC Central, where we run virtual conferences and team training; and for my professional books.
I’ve written eight books on the ASC industry, including The Survey Guide for ASCs and a widely used book on ASC governance. They live at jgoehle.com, and I still speak regularly at surgery center conferences around the country. None of it is very glamorous — it’s mostly about helping good people run safe, honest, well-managed facilities — but it matters, and I enjoy it.
Faith and preaching
Faith has been the quiet thread running under all of it. I preach, and I’ve spent a long time paying attention to the small, persistent nudges that seem to point a life in a particular direction. I finally wrote about that in a memoir, The Tug — A Memoir of Failure, Faith, and the Quiet Voice That’s Been Guiding You All Along. It’s an honest account — failures included — and it’s the most personal thing I’ve made. You’ll find it at johngoehle.com.
Home
At home in Spencerport, New York, Sue and I raise English Cream Golden Retrievers as a small family breeder — Fox Meadow English Cream Goldens. Our dogs are raised underfoot, health-tested, and thoroughly spoiled before they ever go home with anyone. It’s a long way from surgery center compliance, and that’s exactly the point.
Why this site
People find me through many different doors — a podcast episode, a conference, a book, a compliance question, or a puppy. This site isn’t here to sell you on any of it. It’s just an honest map of what I do and where to find each piece, so you can go straight to whatever brought you here.