Lowcountry Surgery Center, LLC

Lowcountry Surgery Center, LLC, doing business as Roper ST. Francis Eye Center, is a for-profit subsidiary of the nonprofit Roper ST Francis Healthcare Inc. that provides ophthalmology surgical support services to the Department of Veterans Affairs as a prime contractor under full-and-open competition with no set-aside designations. The vendor operates exclusively for a single federal customer—VA Veterans Integrated Service Network 7 (VISN 7) in Charleston, South Carolina—and holds no subcontracting relationships, generating all revenue through direct prime awards on five successive single-award indefinite-delivery contracts issued annually from October 2021 through April 2025, with renewal cycles reaching into 2031.

Lowcountry Surgery Center's capability footprint is narrowly focused on off-site ophthalmological surgical support—providing clinical facility space, supporting staff, and ancillary services while VA physicians and residents perform eye surgery procedures on site. The vendor operates as a Joint Commission-accredited freestanding ambulatory surgical center under CMS deemed-status pricing, at 100 percent of Medicare rates. Recent delivery orders illustrate the work: a $1.51 million firm fixed-price order awarded April 12, 2026 (ultimate completion April 11, 2027) for ophthalmology surgery support services under the $7.5 million IDC running through April 2031; a $1.86 million order from April 12, 2025 for offsite ophthalmology surgical support; and a $742,719 order from October 12, 2024 for off-site surgical support services. The underlying IDC structure—with ceiling values ranging from $712,400 to $7.5 million and annual renewal—reflects the VA's strategy of leveraging community healthcare partners to expand veterans' access to specialized eye care in the Charleston region.

Customer concentration is absolute: all 13 recent awards (100% of combined potential value of $23.5 million) fund VISN 7 requirements, making Lowcountry Surgery Center entirely dependent on a single customer agency and organizational unit. This represents a concentration anomaly rarely seen in federal contractor portfolios; the recompete cliff shows one award with $1.5 million combined potential value completing in the next twenty-four months (the April 2025 IDC expiring April 11, 2025), but the vendor's broader footprint is protected by the April 2025 renewal of the $7.5 million IDC through April 2031, which anchors two of the five top parent vehicles by value.

SCI-reported invoiced revenue on federal service contracts demonstrates a small and growing delivery footprint. The vendor invoiced $2.4 million in FY2023 across 3.0 FTEs and $3 million in FY2024 across 6.0 FTEs—a doubling of staffing year over year. Government-paid hourly rates on these contracts ran a median of $288.49/hr, with the tenth percentile at $237.17/hr and the ninetieth percentile at $404.91/hr, reflecting the mix of administrative, clinical, and surgical-support labor. Across all SCI-reportable prime contracts, zero percent of contractor hours were subcontracted; the vendor builds its own delivery teams and operates with no named subcontractors across its federal footprint. This posture differs materially from the healthcare sector norm, in which many surgery centers rely on subcontracted staffing models.

The parent company, Roper ST Francis Healthcare Inc., is a nonprofit hospital and health system headquartered in Ladson, South Carolina, with an active federal grant portfolio separate from Lowcountry Surgery Center's contract awards. The subsidiary structure isolates the eye-surgery operations from the parent's broader healthcare mission, though both entities operate within the Roper footprint in the Charleston market.