Senior Content Marketing Manager
Ep. 3: Bill Hazen – How Marketing Your ASC Improves Revenue | This Week in Surgery Centers
Here’s what to expect on this week’s episode. 🎙️
Consumer-driven healthcare is on the rise, which means marketing your ASC is no longer negotiable.
But don’t go anywhere yet! It’s not as scary as it sounds…
As the Administrator/CEO of the Surgery Center at Pelham, Bill Hazen is currently running a successful marketing program for his ASC. In this week’s podcast episode, he’s sharing his experiences, tactics, and learnings and breaking down how his team is doing this.
Here’s what Bill shared with us:
1️⃣ Change your mindset: ASCs need to realize that you have a product you’re selling to your community and adjust your thinking to leverage this. You are no longer solely dependent on referrals – patients are consumers and have a say in where they have surgery.
2️⃣ Figure out your brand: What are you messaging? For example, the Surgery Center at Pelham uses marketing to push its Total Joints program and uses these two differentiators to stand out: 1) it will be less expensive than a hospital, and 2) you go home the same night.
3️⃣ Start spreading the word: Through local radio ads, you will want to use that same messaging to stay consistent and effective.
4️⃣ Once you’re comfortable, it’s time to expand: Bill and his team run billboard ads, partner with iHeart Radio, and sponsor Clemson University to build brand awareness and drive case volume.
5️⃣ Provide education: Now that you are driving traffic to your website, you need to provide visitors with helpful content that builds trust. Some examples are surgical videos, price transparency tools, infection rates, and patient satisfaction scores.
6️⃣ Listen and measure: You can qualitatively measure success (when people call, are they saying, “I heard you on the radio!”), and you can quantitatively measure success through Google Analytics.
Find the full episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or YouTube to hear the details and even more.
In our news recap, we’ll cover new tech that has entered the ASC industry for the first time, the importance of hosting an open house, and some industry stats on specialties, ORs, and more.
Episode Transcript
0:00
welcome to this week in surgery centers if you’re in the ASC industry then
0:05
you’re in the right place every week we’ll start the episode off by sharing an interesting conversation we had with
0:11
our featured guest and then we’ll close the episode by recapping the latest news impacting surgery centers we’re excited
0:18
to share with you what we have so let’s get started and see what the industry’s been up to
0:23
[Music] hi everyone here’s what you can expect
0:29
on today’s episode our host Nick Latz spent some time catching up with Bill Hazen the administrator and CEO at the
0:36
surgery center of Pelham bill and his team in South Carolina are doing really impressive things when it comes to
0:42
marketing their ASC specifically their total joints program and during the episode Bill really breaks it down step
0:49
by step on exactly what he’s doing so that other ASCS can experience the same
0:54
success we’ll close the episode with a few news stories we’ll start with some new tech
1:00
that has entered the surgery center industry for the first time look at an ASC in Wyoming that recently held an
1:06
open house and discuss why that matters dive into some data that was recently published about the ASC industry
1:13
specifically and of course and the new segment with a positive story about a NICU volunteer in Indiana I hope
1:20
everyone enjoys the episode and here’s what’s going on this week in surgery centers
1:27
thank you Bill welcome to the show hey glad to be here Nick thanks for
1:33
having me Bill if you don’t mind tell me a little bit about the surgery center at Pelham
1:39
how long have you been open and what types of surgeries do you provide well we’ve been open 18 years this December
1:45
um it’s the second Center we built or other one’s been open about 22 years uh we’re a four hours two GI rooms
1:52
multi-specialty we do pretty much every uh specialty in length pretty heavy on
1:58
Orthopedics and ENT surgery specifically um what are relate a lot to today is uh
2:05
we instituted total joint program total Joy fantastic
2:11
um and one of the things that we like to do on this podcast bill is dig into some of the aspects that go into running and
2:17
operating a surgery center and one of the things that um you know intrigued me and stuck out to me uh based on you know
2:24
researching you and your surgery center is the the ability and the degree to which you guys do direct to consumer
2:31
marketing um what I was curious what drove your decision to start marketing directly to Consumers
2:37
well that’s a great question Nick I mean it’s because surgery centers are very unique in the sense that you know
2:43
everybody came to me for years all the advertising companies wanting to do advertising the problem is what you know
2:50
as a surgery center administrator or CEO you go what am I selling what can I advertise and you know you’re so
2:56
dependent on your like we’re a joint venture between the hospital and Physicians so you’re pretty dependent on
3:03
the surgeons of what they’re going to bring so you you have to Brand it but again what are you going to Brand so
3:09
what kind of put us over the edges we did Total we came up with total joint program we had a orthopedic surgeon we
3:15
wanted to start doing total joints on an outpatient basis and so then we had a product okay so we
3:21
had something we could go out with and that that’s kind of what started us to say okay now we we can really make this
3:27
happen got it so it kind of centered on hey we do a lot of we don’t do a lot of
3:34
different surgeries we have a lot of different Specialties if we’re gonna Market we got to start with a product or
3:39
an offer so it sounds like for you guys that was a total joint product um what types of marketing did you do
3:45
around that well with that being said like I said we wanted to Nick we really wanted to Brand
3:51
so you know there’s several surgery centers around us and it like I said it’s the same thing everywhere so we’re
3:57
located very close to an interstate major Interstate runs between Greenville Atlanta and Charlotte so we started out
4:04
with Billboards and came up with the slogan of uh newney.com and we built a website around that where
4:11
you go directly to a website and all it taught was a knee showing that we’re going to replace your knee in one day
4:17
and send you home so that was kind of a unique thing that got us started and so then we started
4:23
getting a little bit from that for website but not what we wanted so we jumped in local radio media and started
4:29
to just push our program about our safety how we could do it in one day you
4:34
know and make it a very like I said save process and a costly process for
4:40
compared to what a hospital did it for because we could do it so much cheaper so that evolved and it takes a long time
4:47
to get to where you just get branded so then we started getting feedback from the public about other Physicians saying
4:54
you know well they they’re not really doing that outpatient you know they’re they’re just telling you they’re going to keep you overnight so we kind of
5:01
tailored our program and after we pretty much maximized that local market and we
5:07
had seen patients coming in then we went to uh I heart media program and went to
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a more broad to where we started doing geofencing um we do radio we did a video that’s on
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our website we show surgical videos on our website but an important thing that that we had to do is that the the
5:27
culture that we came up with was I’m very blessed in the sense it’s
5:33
unbelievable to have you normally have to go out and get somebody like you to talk on the radio that talks really well
5:38
and does the commercial I have a Clinical Director who is she is just fantastic and can just rattle words off
5:46
has a very easy coming and she kind of cuts through the chatter on the radio and then my physician
5:53
uh was here also and what made that such a good thing is he’s from Clemson we do
5:59
a large program with Clemson University you know we get and we do their games so of course we have national uh publicity
6:06
due to that and with him being a graduate of Clemson we could pull them right into the
6:12
upstate so when you call so by doing our advertising and I think this is crucial to any kind of marketing you do in ASC
6:19
versus a hospital or somebody else we’re actually using someone that works here so if you were to call up and say you
6:24
saw my commercial and you said yeah I need my knee replaced so you call up you’re going to go directly to Kathy
6:30
Witham my Clinical Director the person you heard on the radio and she’s going to talk to you directly
6:37
then we’re going to send you straight to Dr armasita’s office and then you’re going to see exactly
6:43
what you heard on the radio family both of these people did a hundred percent of the commercials with one take
6:51
something you got some Talent there right so it just works for them so I mean that was a big thing in how we you
7:00
know made this work fantastic and that’s uh sounds like an Innovative approach and you mentioned a
7:07
couple different marketing channels there starting with the Billboards and going to the local radio stations was
7:13
there a way for you guys to measure that or did you get a sense for you know how is this working as you were going along
7:20
we do use analytics we use Google analytics on our website and we had to redo our entire website
7:27
to make it more user-friendly especially from a mobile aspect um because to start with we were just
7:32
Drilling in a phone number you know but then we started getting them to go so they could interact again our website is
7:39
done the whole thing is done with people from the center so what you see there when you come here you’re going to see
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the same thing which we feel is extremely important it’s a culture that
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we’ve sent that you’re going to be taken care of by the same poop you are here on the radio are going to be the people that may walk you to your car
7:58
you know so that judgment as far as you can look at your analytics and you can geofence like I said so we know it’s
8:05
kind of scary but we know if they’re at a competitor’s office and then if that body is physically inside our forward
8:13
walls so we can kind of Judge if they were targeted there and then if we had
8:18
seen them here and on a joint it’s a little bit easier because we do a pre-assessment with the patient to make
8:25
sure they’re going to be good and then we bring them in for the surgery so by correlating between the two dates and we
8:32
know about what that is we could say that’s probably a joint and then the other thing is we rely a
8:39
lot on you know our orthopedic surgeon he will come over here every week and say you know people walk in and go oh I
8:45
heard your commercial on the radio okay so a lot of it’s feedback you know and we do 100 patients are
8:53
um survey afterwards and we we do get a lot of comments about the way they found but now what kind of kicked this along
9:00
even further is we went to you know went to a transparency program that was
9:06
developed you know Clarity and then we kind of pushed them we went you know this is great it works great for us but
9:12
you know everybody says the state said the government says you got to be transparent so why don’t we put that on
9:18
a web page hence came out catalyst so on our web page when you go to it you go right up you can put in your medical
9:25
information get it pick any procedure get a price right then either a cash price
9:31
or you can get a price by your insurance and your entire deductible what has been
9:37
paid to the minute so you’re using the same program we use we just put a face on it so now we got a second product to
9:45
sell now you’ve got something good people and this came at a perfect time with covid
9:50
and when people started really looking at Health Care as a commodity that you have to purchase deductibles are five
9:57
thousand plus this is a cash business now so what am I going to do I have to
10:03
compete so my prices are truly truly out there in a transparent way it’s
10:09
unbelievable and so now I don’t have patients complaining about paying their bill coming in they’re very comfortable
10:15
because they see and we educate so the whole thing kind of joined
10:20
together in that respect that’s that’s fantastic and you mentioned a couple of things there bill
10:25
that I wanted to ask about um so you you mentioned you know patients potential patients consumers
10:31
coming into the website getting estimates on the cost of procedures it sounds like what you’re describing is
10:37
consumers researching and making decisions on where they want to have surgery on their own is that the
10:45
behavior that that you guys were promoting and driving yes sir again this whole thing Nick is you can’t
10:51
we can’t really control where these patients go you know we did years ago we did local community festivals you know
10:58
with small giveaways and had a presence for two days talk about and everything and the first thing it will conductor
11:03
Smith Dr Smith is my doctor can he do surgery at your Center and of course your response is no so again that drives
11:10
you why would I ever advertise well now you’re going after the patient who truly can make the decision and should be
11:17
making the decision so you have a person that’s got to have a total joint they go to a physician you geofence them you hit
11:24
them with a surgery center at Pelham on their phone oh they look it’s a total need let
11:30
me see what it says they look it up and they say they can go home the same day well then they have a number they can
11:35
call and you say we can get you right in to see our physician so all of a sudden you’re pulling patients away from in a
11:42
roundabout way from other surgery centers or hospitals or Physicians so
11:47
you know people are very interested in knowing what they owe because like I said it’s
11:53
so much of its cash I mean ninety percent of what we do is under the deductible limit mm-hmm
12:01
that and that’s that’s so interesting because that process that you described with the consumer driven Healthcare you
12:07
know obviously is different than we typically see in terms of how patients are making decisions in in this industry
12:13
in general around location right where it typically starts with the surgeon and the surgeon kind of dictating hey here’s
12:20
here’s where we’re going to do the surgery what led you to tests or what led you to
12:25
believe that you could kind of flip the decision process like this is this something you’ve done before in your
12:30
career no it was really literally it was I think it was coming the the transparency
12:36
thing with the cash people would call them say hey I called the hospital I’ve been waiting 30 days they can’t even give me a price
12:43
all right so now they know um or if they did get a price they go oh
12:49
my gosh you’re so much cheaper so you know and like I said covet played into this because people did not want to
12:56
be in the hospital so I think that it just kind of really to be honest with you Nick evolved on its own that the
13:03
patients found that they could get very quick response and they had a choice in the matter and we do a lot of education
13:10
on our website um you know we’ll talk a little bit about that later about what you can
13:16
really do to drive this home at the end yeah and that’s that’s super interesting
13:22
and so you’re the you’re the the CEO and administrator
13:28
um of of your Center and you develop this what sounds like highly effective marketing program do you have a
13:35
background in marketing uh or these just kind of things that you iterated and tested and tried how did you develop
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this um you know I came from a hospital setting started out as a nurse had an
13:46
industrial background before I went back to nursing so it was just an evolution of got laid off from a job looked at the
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paper there was 25 nursing jobs in paper always wanted to go into medicine didn’t have the money to go to med school so
13:58
went into nursing and doors just opened it’s um you know I’m a firm believer and
14:04
it’s a bottom-up community I mean we work here we do a bonus system with our
14:10
employees we take five percent of profits and we split it every quarter with all the employees equally
14:17
everybody gets the same piece of pie so I’m not a surgical nurse never was I was
14:22
in other things and I was more of a trauma type situation so when I came
14:27
here and I built the center and it didn’t work out I always say the adoption papers didn’t go through we
14:33
hired an administrator and so six weeks later here I was and now 18 years later here I still am but you know you watch
14:41
what’s going on in the OR and you try to get the people I said what we try to do is a culture of ownership here yep so
14:48
it’s just evolved into the marketing thing like I said is it’s you have to just realize you have something to sell
14:55
and and again this transparency thing even though a lot of people are pushing against it and saying the government’s
15:02
being intrusive and in some respects I can see issues with that the other thing
15:07
is it’s really fair to the patient you don’t go I mean you would never I mean a
15:13
great example I think of is if you go out to eat in somebody else is paying the bill they say let’s order a bottle of wine you don’t care if the price is
15:20
on the menu or not you’re just looking for the best glass of wine but if the
15:26
price is on there and you’re paying for it then you’re a little bit more you’re going to research and figure out what
15:32
you want to do and I think the more we can teach our patients the more success we’re going to have in
15:38
the rehab in their outcome and how they deal with you and and your
15:44
success as a center yeah I love that perspective and I think that makes a lot of sense
15:49
and you mentioned bill that kind of ownership ownership mindset um and and so I was curious how was it
15:57
in terms of getting buy-in from your physician owners around this marketing approach because it is is an incremental
16:03
expense I would assume yeah it is and it was interesting when I brought up we were going to Market and
16:08
you know of course again we’re half owned by the hospital half by physicians Physicians are always on my side the
16:14
hospital is more on the money side you know so and they’re like oh you know Billboards is that a good thing to do we
16:20
don’t know if that’s a good thing to do it’s interesting our hospital system now has 27 Billboards in the area since we started all this but you know
16:28
it was really all we did Nick was break down what we got paid
16:34
for a joint replacement and granted there is some cost with that and figured how many of those do I need
16:41
to do before I paid for it and amazingly
16:46
it’s pretty quick you know basically we’re doing about 30 joints a month so
16:54
in a week and a half we paid for our year advertising sure in terms of incremental case volume
17:00
that you’re able to generate yeah right and now because you know you’ve replaced somebody’s joint they haven’t had to be
17:06
in the hospital for five days they’ve done so much better well now when their family member needs a gallbladder or
17:12
their child needs their tonsils taken out well this was a great place to go we’ve been very fortunate and we’ve been
17:19
able to maintain a 99.9 patient satisfaction for 18 years wow we have a
17:24
very good response so that’s not a Fluff number because you got 10 surveys back out of 500 patients a month we get about
17:32
68 to 69 of our surveys back electronically every month wow that’s
17:38
fantastic and since we’re talking about marketing and acquiring patients is that
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something that you highlight in the marketing process the the 99.7 oh yeah
17:49
well again the transparency I guess that’s what you know if I could tell you
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anything today okay about a surgeon Center is like I said people are becoming more
18:02
educated which is great right but they demand more accurate information so the
18:07
more transparent you can be with your pricing we put our transfers if we transfer a patient hospital has to be
18:13
reported to our state agency we put it on our website if we have an infection we put our
18:19
infection rates we should so we show our you know we show our true colors if we
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make them you know something happens not a mistake but if you know you get infections just be honest about it right
18:30
and I think so when people come to the website again this culture of the person
18:35
you heard on the radio that’s who you talk to on the phone that’s who you’re going to see sometime here doing the surgery
18:41
and you you know the whole thing so it’s a it’s kind of a family atmosphere that we kind of built I mean we do our
18:47
streaming we do everything with the same voices uh yeah I I love the approach I think it
18:54
breeds familiarity around you oriented around your service offering exactly
19:00
Nick and you know this is a you know having your joint replaced and I mean I keep going back to joints but
19:05
again you’ve got to have something to sell if you’re going to Market either transparency or joints or something but
19:11
having your joint replaced I mean we’ve made it 20 years ago I said there was no way we’d ever do it we do a tourniquet lists
19:18
with less than 50 cc’s of blood loss which is unheard of nobody doesn’t need tourniquet lists and you’re literally in
19:25
and out of the center in five hours and you’re walking an hour after surgery I would have never believed that but this
19:30
is a major surgery for most people you got to think hard about whether you want to go through this so the more comfort
19:38
you can bring to that and that’s the other thing you know you need this consistency because you can
19:45
tell somebody they’re going home all day long but they got to really go home that day you know we can’t we can’t keep them
19:52
overnight and it’s not going to be pain-free you know you are going to answer me so
19:57
we don’t do it what’s called a joint Camp which a lot of your viewers will understand what it is but we do do a lot
20:03
of Education through the entire process and I think that’s the key to all surgery centers now is just working with
20:09
your patients and educating them of what you really do right that’s right and and so you
20:16
mentioned kind of a couple things that are part of your formula you mentioned you know the product total joints you
20:22
you mentioned kind of some of the promotion and the tactics that you do around it to drive eyeballs to to the
20:27
website and then you’ve also talked a lot about price and price transparency and putting the price up front on the
20:34
website which obviously can be hard to do in healthcare and hard to do in surgery because there’s so many factors
20:39
that it’s dependent on in terms insurance and pay ORS and deductibles and those sorts of things
20:45
do you feel as though providing price up front gets more of those consumers those
20:50
potential patients to actually continue and move forward in the process instead of just you know
20:56
researching actually call you and move forward and schedule yeah sure there’s a couple things with
21:01
our transparent so we do have the availability to track who’s on our website and call them what I like to say
21:08
as a used car salesman we do not do that we don’t do it you call you can go on
21:13
there we’re not going to track your name you have to call us we want you to reach out to us so we’re
21:19
trying to just say you know we’re gonna We’re not gonna try to sell you you got to be sold to come to us so then when they come I think what’s interesting is
21:25
it’s I would say there’s not a week go by and I try to speak with every patient
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in the center every day that’s part of my goal I come in every morning I speak
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to every one of the employees and then I during the day every hour so I make
21:41
rounds through the surgery center and try to speak to every patient in some part of the process and you know so what you’re doing
21:49
is bringing them that comfort and there’s every week I’ll have somebody
21:54
say well you know I Why’d You Come here you know there’s there’s nothing better than just asking the patient you know
22:00
why in starting conversation with them again to alleviate that stress Why’d You Come here oh well I called the
22:06
hospital and it was going to be seven thousand dollars I had it done for here for 3 200. I had my deductible is five
22:12
thousand dollars I hear that every week the other thing is they’re having to pay
22:17
a lot we we probably have cut down 80 percent of our calls when they receive
22:24
the bill and saying oh I I didn’t realize I was going to owe you all this well they’re told up front it actually
22:31
they get a printer it sent an email to them the other good thing for from the administrative side you wouldn’t want to
22:37
go as consumers we track that email and that tax so when they show up and they know
22:42
they’ve re we know they’ve read it they said well I didn’t know I was going to pay two thousand dollars a day and go well Tuesday at 4 15 you read the email
22:50
it’s there in a digital that’s right oh okay uh yeah maybe I gotta pay you the
22:56
two thousand dollars so but like I said generally if you educate people they’re less worried about the money so I think
23:02
that I think transparency does drive your business and a cash price these days is very important because a lot of
23:09
people still don’t have insurance and they’re kind of the ones that get hammered in this whole deal sure yeah
23:15
well it sounds like you do a good job of setting expectations you know for these
23:20
patients and for these consumers along along in the process which which certainly seems like it’s paying dividends down the road both in terms of
23:26
patient satisfaction and the patient satisfaction scores is uh as well as getting paid and getting paid up front
23:34
um you know you’ve mentioned your website a couple times it’s kind of a central Hub in this marketing process and this
23:40
marketing program that you run curious do you guys manage your website yourself or do you do you uh utilize a third
23:46
party to help you with it well newney.com we went out there and just did it on our own and we made it I love
23:53
that name by the way and it was absolutely terrible you know so and then
23:58
it kind of had the link to our other one our other ones very Antiquated so uh yes we did go to an outside company we don’t
24:05
spend a tremendous amount of money again I’m very blessed in that everybody here wears multiple hats and one of my
24:13
clinical directors is very computer savvy so she can alter a lot of the things in it but yes we use an outside
24:20
company because it’s really important to have the Google analytics to look at your response time to see where they’re
24:26
going on your your web page see what your bounce rate is so you know how
24:32
where they’re staying how long they’re staying what they’re watching and you have to tie again the whole culture has
24:38
to be everything has to be the same and tied together because you are wasting your money if you cannot validate what
24:46
you’re doing is helping your business yeah well it’s an impressive it’s an oppressive approach you’ve developed
24:52
Bill and um you know it was really fun to talk to you about it uh because this is this is something that that not a lot
24:58
of ASCS are doing and it’s it’s also fun to hear you know this isn’t something that that you know you went to school
25:04
for or you know had a bunch of years in your career of History around it sounds like a process of experimentation and
25:11
trial and error and how do we measure this and how do we validate and kind of tweak as we go um which which is fun so final question
25:19
for you here Bill and then and we asked this um every week to all of our guests what is one thing that our listeners can do
25:26
this week to improve their surgery centers first off Nick I’d like to thank you for having me I I really enjoy this
25:32
as you can tell I’m pretty passionate about it um we built a great Center here it’s uh
25:37
I’m so proud of the employees and everything they do here it’s like I said it’s like a family but uh again I just
25:43
can’t reiterate the most important thing you can do and you can start this today is even if you have to do a simple
25:49
website or even just when you’re dealing with your patients be 100 transparent
25:55
just tell them your good points and your bad points you know I mean you don’t want to burn yourself up but don’t try
26:01
to hide things just just be honest about what’s going to happen what it’s going to cost and what their expectations are
26:07
and what your expectations are too and make it a partnership that that’s probably more important than anything to
26:14
do and the other thing is I I go back to this a lot of centers will not do this profit
26:21
sharing with your employees you have no idea on a quarterly basis we do that in
26:26
a check we hand it to our employees how much that means to them because they are involved in what’s going on they know
26:34
my pre-op nurses know that crayons cost 65 cents a piece so they go in and they
26:41
ask the child are you going to play with your mom’s phone or are you going to call her because they don’t want to waste the 65 cents because for every
26:48
dollar it’s five cents in their pocket and we cost life here we’re on a true EMR we’re paperless and and so we cost
26:56
every penny and we know when the patient walks out the door exactly what our profit margin is so if you can get your
27:03
employees to be owners in the business you’ll make money fantastic well Bill it sounds like
27:08
you’ve got a fantastic Center really enjoyed the conversation hearing about what you’re doing and thanks so much for
27:14
joining us well thanks again for having me okay I appreciate it very much have a great day now stay tuned everybody for what’s
27:20
going on in the news this week [Music]
27:27
as always it has been a busy busy care so let’s Jump Right In in a
27:33
press release posted to PR newswire we have some new tech entering the ASC industry there is a company that
27:40
provides patient education software called discharge123 that has officially moved
27:46
into the ASC space Cloud Surgical Center is in Concord Massachusetts and they are
27:52
the first Surgery Center to implement this software called composer so the company is discharged one two three and
27:58
the software is called composer now the company has been around for a while but this is the first time that
28:04
their software is being used in an ASC what it does is provide patients with
28:10
discharge instructions and educational materials that are easy to read in the language of their choice and really
28:16
tailored to the patient in their experience by providing documents like these to
28:22
patients I’m sure you can all imagine the benefits the goal is to improve patient outcomes improve patient
28:28
satisfaction and really build more efficient workflows for the clinicians as well
28:33
I’m sure everyone can agree the better we can enable patients to properly care for themselves after a
28:40
procedure the safer they will be and the better our outcomes will be so we’d love to see asc’s adopting
28:47
technology at any part of the patient’s Journey so kudos to Cloud Surgical Center for being the first tier
28:55
our second story comes from ASC focus and it’s about an ASC in Wyoming that
29:00
recently hosted an open house now I know you’re probably thinking Erica is this really news and the answer
29:09
is yes it’s news because holding an open house at your ASC is hugely important
29:14
for multiple reasons so this story is not only interesting but will hopefully
29:19
inspire you to do the same so let’s start at the beginning Linda Bedwell is the administrator at Powder
29:26
River Surgery Center in Gillette Wyoming sounds like a beautiful place to have a
29:31
procedure done um now Linda noticed two things the first 2022 is an election year and not a
29:39
single local official has mentioned health care or surgery centers on any of their platforms on a local basis
29:47
the second patients were leaving the state of Wyoming to have procedures done because
29:52
they didn’t realize the high quality of care they can receive right in their backyard so Linda decided to invite a
30:00
bunch of people to her surgery center for an open house she’s invited local
30:05
state and federal elected officials along with their staff local primary
30:11
care physicians uh the Center surgeons insurance carriers the Wyoming Hospital
30:16
Association officials and supply chain professionals so she brought everybody
30:22
from all sectors of their local Health Care Community to this open house
30:27
and in partnership with ASCA powder River’s open house ended up being a huge success and attendees were able to have
30:35
meaningful discussions around Health Care in general and specifically the state of health care in Wyoming which
30:41
has its own unique challenges uh and from the picture shared in the article it looks like there were 12 plus guests
30:47
in attendance I’m sure there were more that’s just what I noticed in the pictures that I saw and if I had to
30:54
guess everyone learned a whole lot about the surgery Center’s role in a community and I’m sure Linda and her team made a
31:01
huge impact that day and made a lasting impression on everybody who was there so
31:06
um I thought this was a really cool story and I think that the idea of having an open house is is something
31:12
that a lot more ASC should take on and I know that ASCA has resources on their
31:17
website as well to help everybody do just that so really cool stuff coming out of
31:23
Wyoming and Switching gears to our third story here ASC data if you haven’t heard of
31:30
them yet they’re a company that provides one cohesive data source just for our industry which is really such a blessing
31:37
if you think about it to have our own unique data set that is not lumped in with other health care sectors so ASC
31:45
data released their Q2 2022 data and there are a few numbers I thought would
31:50
be good to share just to kind of set the scene on where the industry is at right now
31:56
so looking at the industry at a high level there are now 6087 Medicare certified ASCS across the
32:05
country which is actually a point four percent increase from q1 and again we’ll
32:11
I’ll put a link to um all the data I’m about to share in the episode notes if you’re a visual
32:17
person I know sometimes it could be tricky to follow numbers um presented like this but definitely go
32:23
look at some of the graphs that ASC data has come out with they’re really interesting and you’ll notice that all these numbers are increasing which is
32:29
always good to see um so roughly 6 000 Medicare certified ASCS and out of those
32:37
50.6 of those are single specialty only which is really interesting that it’s
32:43
almost exactly split between facilities that are single versus multi-specialty
32:49
the average number of ORS in an ASC is 3.08 so essentially three
32:56
and for a single specialty facility the most common specialty is endoscopy
33:03
and then for two single specialty facilities the most common two that get
33:08
combined are Orthopedics and pain I just thought that was interesting to
33:14
think about it like that and then lastly one more stat for you more than 80 percent of surgeries in the country are
33:21
now performed in an outpatient setting so um again just going back to the importance of those open houses and all
33:28
these other things that the industry is doing to build awareness in our communities that
33:34
um you know so many surgeries can be performed in our facilities so the goal in sharing these numbers
33:40
with you is just to give you a sense of where the industry is at and to show that ASCS are growing and thriving and
33:46
when ASC data releases their Q3 numbers will be shared sure to share those as well
33:53
and to end our new segment on a positive note The Today Show shared a story about
33:58
um the mom of a former NICU baby who has opened a hospital Beauty Bar to pamper
34:04
and spoil the parents whose babies are currently in the NICU Sarah pulley is her name and she opened up her beauty
34:11
bar just a month ago and it’s on the third floor of the Ronald McDonald family room in the maternity Tower at
34:18
Riley Children’s Health in Carmel Indiana and for no charge she will shampoo blow
34:25
dry and give scalp massages to any parent who recently delivered in the maternity Tower and has a baby in the
34:32
NICU Sarah shared in the article some really sweet exchanges that she’s had
34:37
with parents during her time volunteering there and as you can imagine everyone is really grateful for
34:43
her time and her support so great job Sarah and that news story officially wraps up
34:51
this week’s podcast thank you as always for spending a few minutes of your week with us make sure to subscribe or leave
34:57
a review on whichever platform you’re listening from I hope you have a great day and we’ll see you again next week
35:06
[Music] why are you keeping me
welcome to this week in surgery centers if you’re in the ASC industry then
0:05
you’re in the right place every week we’ll start the episode off by sharing an interesting conversation we had with
0:11
our featured guest and then we’ll close the episode by recapping the latest news impacting surgery centers we’re excited
0:18
to share with you what we have so let’s get started and see what the industry’s been up to
0:23
[Music] hi everyone here’s what you can expect
0:29
on today’s episode our host Nick Latz spent some time catching up with Bill Hazen the administrator and CEO at the
0:36
surgery center of Pelham bill and his team in South Carolina are doing really impressive things when it comes to
0:42
marketing their ASC specifically their total joints program and during the episode Bill really breaks it down step
0:49
by step on exactly what he’s doing so that other ASCS can experience the same
0:54
success we’ll close the episode with a few news stories we’ll start with some new tech
1:00
that has entered the surgery center industry for the first time look at an ASC in Wyoming that recently held an
1:06
open house and discuss why that matters dive into some data that was recently published about the ASC industry
1:13
specifically and of course and the new segment with a positive story about a NICU volunteer in Indiana I hope
1:20
everyone enjoys the episode and here’s what’s going on this week in surgery centers
1:27
thank you Bill welcome to the show hey glad to be here Nick thanks for
1:33
having me Bill if you don’t mind tell me a little bit about the surgery center at Pelham
1:39
how long have you been open and what types of surgeries do you provide well we’ve been open 18 years this December
1:45
um it’s the second Center we built or other one’s been open about 22 years uh we’re a four hours two GI rooms
1:52
multi-specialty we do pretty much every uh specialty in length pretty heavy on
1:58
Orthopedics and ENT surgery specifically um what are relate a lot to today is uh
2:05
we instituted total joint program total Joy fantastic
2:11
um and one of the things that we like to do on this podcast bill is dig into some of the aspects that go into running and
2:17
operating a surgery center and one of the things that um you know intrigued me and stuck out to me uh based on you know
2:24
researching you and your surgery center is the the ability and the degree to which you guys do direct to consumer
2:31
marketing um what I was curious what drove your decision to start marketing directly to Consumers
2:37
well that’s a great question Nick I mean it’s because surgery centers are very unique in the sense that you know
2:43
everybody came to me for years all the advertising companies wanting to do advertising the problem is what you know
2:50
as a surgery center administrator or CEO you go what am I selling what can I advertise and you know you’re so
2:56
dependent on your like we’re a joint venture between the hospital and Physicians so you’re pretty dependent on
3:03
the surgeons of what they’re going to bring so you you have to Brand it but again what are you going to Brand so
3:09
what kind of put us over the edges we did Total we came up with total joint program we had a orthopedic surgeon we
3:15
wanted to start doing total joints on an outpatient basis and so then we had a product okay so we
3:21
had something we could go out with and that that’s kind of what started us to say okay now we we can really make this
3:27
happen got it so it kind of centered on hey we do a lot of we don’t do a lot of
3:34
different surgeries we have a lot of different Specialties if we’re gonna Market we got to start with a product or
3:39
an offer so it sounds like for you guys that was a total joint product um what types of marketing did you do
3:45
around that well with that being said like I said we wanted to Nick we really wanted to Brand
3:51
so you know there’s several surgery centers around us and it like I said it’s the same thing everywhere so we’re
3:57
located very close to an interstate major Interstate runs between Greenville Atlanta and Charlotte so we started out
4:04
with Billboards and came up with the slogan of uh newney.com and we built a website around that where
4:11
you go directly to a website and all it taught was a knee showing that we’re going to replace your knee in one day
4:17
and send you home so that was kind of a unique thing that got us started and so then we started
4:23
getting a little bit from that for website but not what we wanted so we jumped in local radio media and started
4:29
to just push our program about our safety how we could do it in one day you
4:34
know and make it a very like I said save process and a costly process for
4:40
compared to what a hospital did it for because we could do it so much cheaper so that evolved and it takes a long time
4:47
to get to where you just get branded so then we started getting feedback from the public about other Physicians saying
4:54
you know well they they’re not really doing that outpatient you know they’re they’re just telling you they’re going to keep you overnight so we kind of
5:01
tailored our program and after we pretty much maximized that local market and we
5:07
had seen patients coming in then we went to uh I heart media program and went to
5:13
a more broad to where we started doing geofencing um we do radio we did a video that’s on
5:20
our website we show surgical videos on our website but an important thing that that we had to do is that the the
5:27
culture that we came up with was I’m very blessed in the sense it’s
5:33
unbelievable to have you normally have to go out and get somebody like you to talk on the radio that talks really well
5:38
and does the commercial I have a Clinical Director who is she is just fantastic and can just rattle words off
5:46
has a very easy coming and she kind of cuts through the chatter on the radio and then my physician
5:53
uh was here also and what made that such a good thing is he’s from Clemson we do
5:59
a large program with Clemson University you know we get and we do their games so of course we have national uh publicity
6:06
due to that and with him being a graduate of Clemson we could pull them right into the
6:12
upstate so when you call so by doing our advertising and I think this is crucial to any kind of marketing you do in ASC
6:19
versus a hospital or somebody else we’re actually using someone that works here so if you were to call up and say you
6:24
saw my commercial and you said yeah I need my knee replaced so you call up you’re going to go directly to Kathy
6:30
Witham my Clinical Director the person you heard on the radio and she’s going to talk to you directly
6:37
then we’re going to send you straight to Dr armasita’s office and then you’re going to see exactly
6:43
what you heard on the radio family both of these people did a hundred percent of the commercials with one take
6:51
something you got some Talent there right so it just works for them so I mean that was a big thing in how we you
7:00
know made this work fantastic and that’s uh sounds like an Innovative approach and you mentioned a
7:07
couple different marketing channels there starting with the Billboards and going to the local radio stations was
7:13
there a way for you guys to measure that or did you get a sense for you know how is this working as you were going along
7:20
we do use analytics we use Google analytics on our website and we had to redo our entire website
7:27
to make it more user-friendly especially from a mobile aspect um because to start with we were just
7:32
Drilling in a phone number you know but then we started getting them to go so they could interact again our website is
7:39
done the whole thing is done with people from the center so what you see there when you come here you’re going to see
7:45
the same thing which we feel is extremely important it’s a culture that
7:51
we’ve sent that you’re going to be taken care of by the same poop you are here on the radio are going to be the people that may walk you to your car
7:58
you know so that judgment as far as you can look at your analytics and you can geofence like I said so we know it’s
8:05
kind of scary but we know if they’re at a competitor’s office and then if that body is physically inside our forward
8:13
walls so we can kind of Judge if they were targeted there and then if we had
8:18
seen them here and on a joint it’s a little bit easier because we do a pre-assessment with the patient to make
8:25
sure they’re going to be good and then we bring them in for the surgery so by correlating between the two dates and we
8:32
know about what that is we could say that’s probably a joint and then the other thing is we rely a
8:39
lot on you know our orthopedic surgeon he will come over here every week and say you know people walk in and go oh I
8:45
heard your commercial on the radio okay so a lot of it’s feedback you know and we do 100 patients are
8:53
um survey afterwards and we we do get a lot of comments about the way they found but now what kind of kicked this along
9:00
even further is we went to you know went to a transparency program that was
9:06
developed you know Clarity and then we kind of pushed them we went you know this is great it works great for us but
9:12
you know everybody says the state said the government says you got to be transparent so why don’t we put that on
9:18
a web page hence came out catalyst so on our web page when you go to it you go right up you can put in your medical
9:25
information get it pick any procedure get a price right then either a cash price
9:31
or you can get a price by your insurance and your entire deductible what has been
9:37
paid to the minute so you’re using the same program we use we just put a face on it so now we got a second product to
9:45
sell now you’ve got something good people and this came at a perfect time with covid
9:50
and when people started really looking at Health Care as a commodity that you have to purchase deductibles are five
9:57
thousand plus this is a cash business now so what am I going to do I have to
10:03
compete so my prices are truly truly out there in a transparent way it’s
10:09
unbelievable and so now I don’t have patients complaining about paying their bill coming in they’re very comfortable
10:15
because they see and we educate so the whole thing kind of joined
10:20
together in that respect that’s that’s fantastic and you mentioned a couple of things there bill
10:25
that I wanted to ask about um so you you mentioned you know patients potential patients consumers
10:31
coming into the website getting estimates on the cost of procedures it sounds like what you’re describing is
10:37
consumers researching and making decisions on where they want to have surgery on their own is that the
10:45
behavior that that you guys were promoting and driving yes sir again this whole thing Nick is you can’t
10:51
we can’t really control where these patients go you know we did years ago we did local community festivals you know
10:58
with small giveaways and had a presence for two days talk about and everything and the first thing it will conductor
11:03
Smith Dr Smith is my doctor can he do surgery at your Center and of course your response is no so again that drives
11:10
you why would I ever advertise well now you’re going after the patient who truly can make the decision and should be
11:17
making the decision so you have a person that’s got to have a total joint they go to a physician you geofence them you hit
11:24
them with a surgery center at Pelham on their phone oh they look it’s a total need let
11:30
me see what it says they look it up and they say they can go home the same day well then they have a number they can
11:35
call and you say we can get you right in to see our physician so all of a sudden you’re pulling patients away from in a
11:42
roundabout way from other surgery centers or hospitals or Physicians so
11:47
you know people are very interested in knowing what they owe because like I said it’s
11:53
so much of its cash I mean ninety percent of what we do is under the deductible limit mm-hmm
12:01
that and that’s that’s so interesting because that process that you described with the consumer driven Healthcare you
12:07
know obviously is different than we typically see in terms of how patients are making decisions in in this industry
12:13
in general around location right where it typically starts with the surgeon and the surgeon kind of dictating hey here’s
12:20
here’s where we’re going to do the surgery what led you to tests or what led you to
12:25
believe that you could kind of flip the decision process like this is this something you’ve done before in your
12:30
career no it was really literally it was I think it was coming the the transparency
12:36
thing with the cash people would call them say hey I called the hospital I’ve been waiting 30 days they can’t even give me a price
12:43
all right so now they know um or if they did get a price they go oh
12:49
my gosh you’re so much cheaper so you know and like I said covet played into this because people did not want to
12:56
be in the hospital so I think that it just kind of really to be honest with you Nick evolved on its own that the
13:03
patients found that they could get very quick response and they had a choice in the matter and we do a lot of education
13:10
on our website um you know we’ll talk a little bit about that later about what you can
13:16
really do to drive this home at the end yeah and that’s that’s super interesting
13:22
and so you’re the you’re the the CEO and administrator
13:28
um of of your Center and you develop this what sounds like highly effective marketing program do you have a
13:35
background in marketing uh or these just kind of things that you iterated and tested and tried how did you develop
13:40
this um you know I came from a hospital setting started out as a nurse had an
13:46
industrial background before I went back to nursing so it was just an evolution of got laid off from a job looked at the
13:52
paper there was 25 nursing jobs in paper always wanted to go into medicine didn’t have the money to go to med school so
13:58
went into nursing and doors just opened it’s um you know I’m a firm believer and
14:04
it’s a bottom-up community I mean we work here we do a bonus system with our
14:10
employees we take five percent of profits and we split it every quarter with all the employees equally
14:17
everybody gets the same piece of pie so I’m not a surgical nurse never was I was
14:22
in other things and I was more of a trauma type situation so when I came
14:27
here and I built the center and it didn’t work out I always say the adoption papers didn’t go through we
14:33
hired an administrator and so six weeks later here I was and now 18 years later here I still am but you know you watch
14:41
what’s going on in the OR and you try to get the people I said what we try to do is a culture of ownership here yep so
14:48
it’s just evolved into the marketing thing like I said is it’s you have to just realize you have something to sell
14:55
and and again this transparency thing even though a lot of people are pushing against it and saying the government’s
15:02
being intrusive and in some respects I can see issues with that the other thing
15:07
is it’s really fair to the patient you don’t go I mean you would never I mean a
15:13
great example I think of is if you go out to eat in somebody else is paying the bill they say let’s order a bottle of wine you don’t care if the price is
15:20
on the menu or not you’re just looking for the best glass of wine but if the
15:26
price is on there and you’re paying for it then you’re a little bit more you’re going to research and figure out what
15:32
you want to do and I think the more we can teach our patients the more success we’re going to have in
15:38
the rehab in their outcome and how they deal with you and and your
15:44
success as a center yeah I love that perspective and I think that makes a lot of sense
15:49
and you mentioned bill that kind of ownership ownership mindset um and and so I was curious how was it
15:57
in terms of getting buy-in from your physician owners around this marketing approach because it is is an incremental
16:03
expense I would assume yeah it is and it was interesting when I brought up we were going to Market and
16:08
you know of course again we’re half owned by the hospital half by physicians Physicians are always on my side the
16:14
hospital is more on the money side you know so and they’re like oh you know Billboards is that a good thing to do we
16:20
don’t know if that’s a good thing to do it’s interesting our hospital system now has 27 Billboards in the area since we started all this but you know
16:28
it was really all we did Nick was break down what we got paid
16:34
for a joint replacement and granted there is some cost with that and figured how many of those do I need
16:41
to do before I paid for it and amazingly
16:46
it’s pretty quick you know basically we’re doing about 30 joints a month so
16:54
in a week and a half we paid for our year advertising sure in terms of incremental case volume
17:00
that you’re able to generate yeah right and now because you know you’ve replaced somebody’s joint they haven’t had to be
17:06
in the hospital for five days they’ve done so much better well now when their family member needs a gallbladder or
17:12
their child needs their tonsils taken out well this was a great place to go we’ve been very fortunate and we’ve been
17:19
able to maintain a 99.9 patient satisfaction for 18 years wow we have a
17:24
very good response so that’s not a Fluff number because you got 10 surveys back out of 500 patients a month we get about
17:32
68 to 69 of our surveys back electronically every month wow that’s
17:38
fantastic and since we’re talking about marketing and acquiring patients is that
17:43
something that you highlight in the marketing process the the 99.7 oh yeah
17:49
well again the transparency I guess that’s what you know if I could tell you
17:55
anything today okay about a surgeon Center is like I said people are becoming more
18:02
educated which is great right but they demand more accurate information so the
18:07
more transparent you can be with your pricing we put our transfers if we transfer a patient hospital has to be
18:13
reported to our state agency we put it on our website if we have an infection we put our
18:19
infection rates we should so we show our you know we show our true colors if we
18:24
make them you know something happens not a mistake but if you know you get infections just be honest about it right
18:30
and I think so when people come to the website again this culture of the person
18:35
you heard on the radio that’s who you talk to on the phone that’s who you’re going to see sometime here doing the surgery
18:41
and you you know the whole thing so it’s a it’s kind of a family atmosphere that we kind of built I mean we do our
18:47
streaming we do everything with the same voices uh yeah I I love the approach I think it
18:54
breeds familiarity around you oriented around your service offering exactly
19:00
Nick and you know this is a you know having your joint replaced and I mean I keep going back to joints but
19:05
again you’ve got to have something to sell if you’re going to Market either transparency or joints or something but
19:11
having your joint replaced I mean we’ve made it 20 years ago I said there was no way we’d ever do it we do a tourniquet lists
19:18
with less than 50 cc’s of blood loss which is unheard of nobody doesn’t need tourniquet lists and you’re literally in
19:25
and out of the center in five hours and you’re walking an hour after surgery I would have never believed that but this
19:30
is a major surgery for most people you got to think hard about whether you want to go through this so the more comfort
19:38
you can bring to that and that’s the other thing you know you need this consistency because you can
19:45
tell somebody they’re going home all day long but they got to really go home that day you know we can’t we can’t keep them
19:52
overnight and it’s not going to be pain-free you know you are going to answer me so
19:57
we don’t do it what’s called a joint Camp which a lot of your viewers will understand what it is but we do do a lot
20:03
of Education through the entire process and I think that’s the key to all surgery centers now is just working with
20:09
your patients and educating them of what you really do right that’s right and and so you
20:16
mentioned kind of a couple things that are part of your formula you mentioned you know the product total joints you
20:22
you mentioned kind of some of the promotion and the tactics that you do around it to drive eyeballs to to the
20:27
website and then you’ve also talked a lot about price and price transparency and putting the price up front on the
20:34
website which obviously can be hard to do in healthcare and hard to do in surgery because there’s so many factors
20:39
that it’s dependent on in terms insurance and pay ORS and deductibles and those sorts of things
20:45
do you feel as though providing price up front gets more of those consumers those
20:50
potential patients to actually continue and move forward in the process instead of just you know
20:56
researching actually call you and move forward and schedule yeah sure there’s a couple things with
21:01
our transparent so we do have the availability to track who’s on our website and call them what I like to say
21:08
as a used car salesman we do not do that we don’t do it you call you can go on
21:13
there we’re not going to track your name you have to call us we want you to reach out to us so we’re
21:19
trying to just say you know we’re gonna We’re not gonna try to sell you you got to be sold to come to us so then when they come I think what’s interesting is
21:25
it’s I would say there’s not a week go by and I try to speak with every patient
21:31
in the center every day that’s part of my goal I come in every morning I speak
21:36
to every one of the employees and then I during the day every hour so I make
21:41
rounds through the surgery center and try to speak to every patient in some part of the process and you know so what you’re doing
21:49
is bringing them that comfort and there’s every week I’ll have somebody
21:54
say well you know I Why’d You Come here you know there’s there’s nothing better than just asking the patient you know
22:00
why in starting conversation with them again to alleviate that stress Why’d You Come here oh well I called the
22:06
hospital and it was going to be seven thousand dollars I had it done for here for 3 200. I had my deductible is five
22:12
thousand dollars I hear that every week the other thing is they’re having to pay
22:17
a lot we we probably have cut down 80 percent of our calls when they receive
22:24
the bill and saying oh I I didn’t realize I was going to owe you all this well they’re told up front it actually
22:31
they get a printer it sent an email to them the other good thing for from the administrative side you wouldn’t want to
22:37
go as consumers we track that email and that tax so when they show up and they know
22:42
they’ve re we know they’ve read it they said well I didn’t know I was going to pay two thousand dollars a day and go well Tuesday at 4 15 you read the email
22:50
it’s there in a digital that’s right oh okay uh yeah maybe I gotta pay you the
22:56
two thousand dollars so but like I said generally if you educate people they’re less worried about the money so I think
23:02
that I think transparency does drive your business and a cash price these days is very important because a lot of
23:09
people still don’t have insurance and they’re kind of the ones that get hammered in this whole deal sure yeah
23:15
well it sounds like you do a good job of setting expectations you know for these
23:20
patients and for these consumers along along in the process which which certainly seems like it’s paying dividends down the road both in terms of
23:26
patient satisfaction and the patient satisfaction scores is uh as well as getting paid and getting paid up front
23:34
um you know you’ve mentioned your website a couple times it’s kind of a central Hub in this marketing process and this
23:40
marketing program that you run curious do you guys manage your website yourself or do you do you uh utilize a third
23:46
party to help you with it well newney.com we went out there and just did it on our own and we made it I love
23:53
that name by the way and it was absolutely terrible you know so and then
23:58
it kind of had the link to our other one our other ones very Antiquated so uh yes we did go to an outside company we don’t
24:05
spend a tremendous amount of money again I’m very blessed in that everybody here wears multiple hats and one of my
24:13
clinical directors is very computer savvy so she can alter a lot of the things in it but yes we use an outside
24:20
company because it’s really important to have the Google analytics to look at your response time to see where they’re
24:26
going on your your web page see what your bounce rate is so you know how
24:32
where they’re staying how long they’re staying what they’re watching and you have to tie again the whole culture has
24:38
to be everything has to be the same and tied together because you are wasting your money if you cannot validate what
24:46
you’re doing is helping your business yeah well it’s an impressive it’s an oppressive approach you’ve developed
24:52
Bill and um you know it was really fun to talk to you about it uh because this is this is something that that not a lot
24:58
of ASCS are doing and it’s it’s also fun to hear you know this isn’t something that that you know you went to school
25:04
for or you know had a bunch of years in your career of History around it sounds like a process of experimentation and
25:11
trial and error and how do we measure this and how do we validate and kind of tweak as we go um which which is fun so final question
25:19
for you here Bill and then and we asked this um every week to all of our guests what is one thing that our listeners can do
25:26
this week to improve their surgery centers first off Nick I’d like to thank you for having me I I really enjoy this
25:32
as you can tell I’m pretty passionate about it um we built a great Center here it’s uh
25:37
I’m so proud of the employees and everything they do here it’s like I said it’s like a family but uh again I just
25:43
can’t reiterate the most important thing you can do and you can start this today is even if you have to do a simple
25:49
website or even just when you’re dealing with your patients be 100 transparent
25:55
just tell them your good points and your bad points you know I mean you don’t want to burn yourself up but don’t try
26:01
to hide things just just be honest about what’s going to happen what it’s going to cost and what their expectations are
26:07
and what your expectations are too and make it a partnership that that’s probably more important than anything to
26:14
do and the other thing is I I go back to this a lot of centers will not do this profit
26:21
sharing with your employees you have no idea on a quarterly basis we do that in
26:26
a check we hand it to our employees how much that means to them because they are involved in what’s going on they know
26:34
my pre-op nurses know that crayons cost 65 cents a piece so they go in and they
26:41
ask the child are you going to play with your mom’s phone or are you going to call her because they don’t want to waste the 65 cents because for every
26:48
dollar it’s five cents in their pocket and we cost life here we’re on a true EMR we’re paperless and and so we cost
26:56
every penny and we know when the patient walks out the door exactly what our profit margin is so if you can get your
27:03
employees to be owners in the business you’ll make money fantastic well Bill it sounds like
27:08
you’ve got a fantastic Center really enjoyed the conversation hearing about what you’re doing and thanks so much for
27:14
joining us well thanks again for having me okay I appreciate it very much have a great day now stay tuned everybody for what’s
27:20
going on in the news this week [Music]
27:27
as always it has been a busy busy care so let’s Jump Right In in a
27:33
press release posted to PR newswire we have some new tech entering the ASC industry there is a company that
27:40
provides patient education software called discharge123 that has officially moved
27:46
into the ASC space Cloud Surgical Center is in Concord Massachusetts and they are
27:52
the first Surgery Center to implement this software called composer so the company is discharged one two three and
27:58
the software is called composer now the company has been around for a while but this is the first time that
28:04
their software is being used in an ASC what it does is provide patients with
28:10
discharge instructions and educational materials that are easy to read in the language of their choice and really
28:16
tailored to the patient in their experience by providing documents like these to
28:22
patients I’m sure you can all imagine the benefits the goal is to improve patient outcomes improve patient
28:28
satisfaction and really build more efficient workflows for the clinicians as well
28:33
I’m sure everyone can agree the better we can enable patients to properly care for themselves after a
28:40
procedure the safer they will be and the better our outcomes will be so we’d love to see asc’s adopting
28:47
technology at any part of the patient’s Journey so kudos to Cloud Surgical Center for being the first tier
28:55
our second story comes from ASC focus and it’s about an ASC in Wyoming that
29:00
recently hosted an open house now I know you’re probably thinking Erica is this really news and the answer
29:09
is yes it’s news because holding an open house at your ASC is hugely important
29:14
for multiple reasons so this story is not only interesting but will hopefully
29:19
inspire you to do the same so let’s start at the beginning Linda Bedwell is the administrator at Powder
29:26
River Surgery Center in Gillette Wyoming sounds like a beautiful place to have a
29:31
procedure done um now Linda noticed two things the first 2022 is an election year and not a
29:39
single local official has mentioned health care or surgery centers on any of their platforms on a local basis
29:47
the second patients were leaving the state of Wyoming to have procedures done because
29:52
they didn’t realize the high quality of care they can receive right in their backyard so Linda decided to invite a
30:00
bunch of people to her surgery center for an open house she’s invited local
30:05
state and federal elected officials along with their staff local primary
30:11
care physicians uh the Center surgeons insurance carriers the Wyoming Hospital
30:16
Association officials and supply chain professionals so she brought everybody
30:22
from all sectors of their local Health Care Community to this open house
30:27
and in partnership with ASCA powder River’s open house ended up being a huge success and attendees were able to have
30:35
meaningful discussions around Health Care in general and specifically the state of health care in Wyoming which
30:41
has its own unique challenges uh and from the picture shared in the article it looks like there were 12 plus guests
30:47
in attendance I’m sure there were more that’s just what I noticed in the pictures that I saw and if I had to
30:54
guess everyone learned a whole lot about the surgery Center’s role in a community and I’m sure Linda and her team made a
31:01
huge impact that day and made a lasting impression on everybody who was there so
31:06
um I thought this was a really cool story and I think that the idea of having an open house is is something
31:12
that a lot more ASC should take on and I know that ASCA has resources on their
31:17
website as well to help everybody do just that so really cool stuff coming out of
31:23
Wyoming and Switching gears to our third story here ASC data if you haven’t heard of
31:30
them yet they’re a company that provides one cohesive data source just for our industry which is really such a blessing
31:37
if you think about it to have our own unique data set that is not lumped in with other health care sectors so ASC
31:45
data released their Q2 2022 data and there are a few numbers I thought would
31:50
be good to share just to kind of set the scene on where the industry is at right now
31:56
so looking at the industry at a high level there are now 6087 Medicare certified ASCS across the
32:05
country which is actually a point four percent increase from q1 and again we’ll
32:11
I’ll put a link to um all the data I’m about to share in the episode notes if you’re a visual
32:17
person I know sometimes it could be tricky to follow numbers um presented like this but definitely go
32:23
look at some of the graphs that ASC data has come out with they’re really interesting and you’ll notice that all these numbers are increasing which is
32:29
always good to see um so roughly 6 000 Medicare certified ASCS and out of those
32:37
50.6 of those are single specialty only which is really interesting that it’s
32:43
almost exactly split between facilities that are single versus multi-specialty
32:49
the average number of ORS in an ASC is 3.08 so essentially three
32:56
and for a single specialty facility the most common specialty is endoscopy
33:03
and then for two single specialty facilities the most common two that get
33:08
combined are Orthopedics and pain I just thought that was interesting to
33:14
think about it like that and then lastly one more stat for you more than 80 percent of surgeries in the country are
33:21
now performed in an outpatient setting so um again just going back to the importance of those open houses and all
33:28
these other things that the industry is doing to build awareness in our communities that
33:34
um you know so many surgeries can be performed in our facilities so the goal in sharing these numbers
33:40
with you is just to give you a sense of where the industry is at and to show that ASCS are growing and thriving and
33:46
when ASC data releases their Q3 numbers will be shared sure to share those as well
33:53
and to end our new segment on a positive note The Today Show shared a story about
33:58
um the mom of a former NICU baby who has opened a hospital Beauty Bar to pamper
34:04
and spoil the parents whose babies are currently in the NICU Sarah pulley is her name and she opened up her beauty
34:11
bar just a month ago and it’s on the third floor of the Ronald McDonald family room in the maternity Tower at
34:18
Riley Children’s Health in Carmel Indiana and for no charge she will shampoo blow
34:25
dry and give scalp massages to any parent who recently delivered in the maternity Tower and has a baby in the
34:32
NICU Sarah shared in the article some really sweet exchanges that she’s had
34:37
with parents during her time volunteering there and as you can imagine everyone is really grateful for
34:43
her time and her support so great job Sarah and that news story officially wraps up
34:51
this week’s podcast thank you as always for spending a few minutes of your week with us make sure to subscribe or leave
34:57
a review on whichever platform you’re listening from I hope you have a great day and we’ll see you again next week
35:06
[Music] why are you keeping me
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