This Week in Surgery Centers: Annual Budget Planning: Knowing Your Audience

Ep. 92: Suzi Walton and Matt Cavanagh – Annual Budget Planning: Knowing Your Audience

Here’s what to expect on this week’s episode. 🎙️

We’re excited to kick off a brand-new series all about Annual Budget Planning!

Annual budget planning is something that every surgery center needs to do, but it’s clear that no two ASCs handle it the same way. The process varies widely, and the budget’s role in daily operations can look very different depending on the center.

Suzi Walton, Administrator at the Ohio Surgery Center, and Matt Cavanagh, Principal at CLA (CliftonLarsonAllen), shared insights on how your approach to budget planning will shift depending on your audience. In their experience:

• In physician-owned ASCs with engaged stakeholders, budgets can be more ambitious. Setting aggressive goals (e.g., 10-15% case volume increases) can inspire competition and serve as a motivational tool.
• With less engaged or risk-averse physicians, the budget might need to be more conservative to ensure comfort, build trust, and bring greater peace of mind to leadership.
• If you have a joint venture with a hospital, they typically demand meticulous planning. Expect more oversight, capital budget requirements, and adherence to templates designed to integrate with hospital systems.

The key? Know your audience and adjust your approach accordingly.

Listen to the full episode for even more advice!

Episode Transcript

[00:00:00] Welcome to this week in Surgery Centers. If you are in the ASC industry, then you are in the right place every week. We’ll start the episode off by sharing an interesting conversation we had with our featured guest, and then we’ll close the episode by recapping the latest news impacting surgery centers.

We’re excited to share with you what we have, so let’s get started and see what the industry’s been up to.

Erica: Hi, everyone. Here’s what you can expect on today’s episode. I am very excited to kick off a brand new three part series all about annual budget planning. This is something that every surgery center needs to do to some degree to make sure the following year is successful and that everyone is on the same page.

Erica: But here’s the interesting part. In the conversations I’ve had while prepping for this series, it’s clear that no two ASCs handle budget planning the same way. The process can vary widely and the role the budget plays in daily operations, even after [00:01:00] it’s approved, can look very different depending on the center.

Erica: So to get us started, I sat down with Susie Walton and Matt Kavanaugh. Susie is the administrator at the Ohio Surgery Center, and she has over a dozen budget cycles under her belt. And Matt is a principal at Clifton Larson Allen, and he has nearly 20 years of experience working directly with ASCs on their budget planning and overall financials.

Erica: Together, they shared insights on how your approach to budget planning might shift depending on who your audience is. So whether you’re physician owned, part of a management group, or involved in a joint venture, Susie and Matt explain how these ownership models influence the budgeting process. And after my conversation with the two of them, we’ll switch to our data and insight segment.

Erica: HST released our annual state of the industry report in September, which analyzed client data from 590 surgery centers. The metric I’m excited to dive into today with you is all about OR block utilization [00:02:00] and treads. So we’ll cover what the 2024 numbers showed and tips for how to improve OR utilization altogether.

Erica: Hope everyone enjoys the episode and here’s what’s going on this week in surgery centers.

Erica: Susie, Matt, welcome to the podcast. Thank you so much.

Matt: Thanks, Erica.

Erica: I’m really excited to have you both on today to kick off our three part series all about annual budgets for surgery centers.

Erica: But before we get started, I just love for both of you to share a little bit more about yourselves and your AIC experience. So Susie, do you mind going first?

Suzi: Not at all. Thank you. So I’m Susie Walton. I’m from the Ohio Surgery Center in Columbus, Ohio. We are an all ENT surgery center with the physician owned.

Suzi: We’ve been around for 26 years and I’ve been here the entire time.

Matt: Great. So that goes to me. I’m Matt Kavanaugh. I’m with Clifton Larsen Allen. We’re a professional services firm that’s located throughout the country. I actually sit [00:03:00] in Northwest Ohio. I have worked with Ambulatory surgery centers as clients for several years, going back to 2005. And I’m happy to be here.

Erica: Perfect. Thank you both. And you actually both came very highly recommended from the Ohio ASC association, which we love at HST to speak on the topic of budgets today. So let’s get started and start from the top with some of the basic logistics at a surgery center who typically creates the budget.

Erica: What time of year, where do they begin?

Suzi: So I think traditionally in surgery center land, most of us run on an actual calendar basis. So we, in the fall right now is when we kick off doing budgeting. It starts a little bit sooner than that for us. With looking at our old budget and seeing where we’re going to do it.

Suzi: It involves the board. It involves all of our clinical directors. It involves our business office. And. The Surgery Center and our lovely accounting Matt. So I’ll get over to Matt because he can talk a little more about what goes into it and what we think about.

Matt: Yeah, [00:04:00] Erica, as you’re looking at this time of year, this is when usually, everyone calls it budget season.

Matt: I know sometimes, you said before it’s exciting. I don’t know if that’s the word everyone uses when they come up with budget, but we’ll go with that. I think when you’re getting into the budget time of year it’s typically in the ASC world, the administrators are the one that kind of run with it.

Matt: With the assistance of their staff and outside council and things like that. And I think the biggest thing when we look at it starting the process, it’s, we want to plan for it. We got to prepare the budget and then we got to figure out how to get the budget accepted. So that’s the process we look at when we go through it.

Matt: We got to plan for it by looking at a little bit about the past and look and see what happened, where did we go wrong in the past on our budgets and how can we make it better and then look towards what information do we need to gather? Who do we need to work with? Coordinate those meetings and then get into the details of actually preparing the budget.

Matt: And then get the process on, who do we need to get with to approve it, whether it’s a board that runs with the surgery center, if it’s a joint venture you might have to have a hospital [00:05:00] partner get involved in the process and ultimately getting the budget approved and then moving on to the next year.

Suzi: So one of the things we’re always looking at, and I know Matt would speak to this as well, is we’re always looking at who our audience is, like to determine how you’re going to go about approaching your budget.

Erica: Yeah, thank you for all that info. It’s great to level set, but I think that’s a perfect segue because I do want to spend the bulk of the conversation talking about that audience, because it sounds based on who that audience is, that’s really going to change the budget process with the budget could even look like.

Erica: So let’s focus on the top three most common scenarios. Let’s start with. a physician owned surgery center who have physicians that are very invested in the budget. What does that look like? How does that change things?

Suzi: So I’m going to run with this one, Matt, if you don’t mind. You’re part of it too.

Suzi: But this is how we ran for the first probably 15 years of our existence at the surgery center. And we [00:06:00] had a board that intimately trusted the administrator that was in place. I was the business office manager at the time. And we had fun with the budget. Like normally I could tell you I could do it, but we had fun.

Suzi: We made it very aggressive and we were shooting for the stars. And we knew we’d land like shooting for the moon. Knew you’d land in the stars. They were totally fine with that. We honestly, Matt and I used to joke. We didn’t know if they actually ever read it versus just at a checkbox, but they love the results that they got out of it.

Suzi: So it was more an internal motivator for our staff. And to push the surgeons to get the case volume and like all of these things, we use it literally as a tool to test our limits instead of just being a conservative budget.

Erica: Sure. And when you say push the boundaries, are you putting in stuff like new like capital expenses like your projections are a little less conservative?

Erica: Maybe you’re. [00:07:00] Potentially know the case volume you’re projecting might have a 10 percent range. What does that look like?

Suzi: Yeah. So if we were literally hoping to get a 5 percent increase in volume at the time, we would put volume increases in at more 10, 15%. We would really look at But we look at honesty in the sense of who’s retiring, who’s slowing down, whatever.

Suzi: But on the other parts of the budget, we would really get very aggressive and say, but what if we’ve got the space? What could we do? Where could we ramp up a program? Could we get more thyroids? That was a program we kicked off and we kicked it off really aggressively on the budget. Those were the types of things that we were looking at of how can we motivate people and paint a story like we use the budget as a narrative.

Suzi: To paint a story to get everybody excited and on board for OKRs that we were doing.

Erica: Yeah, I love that. And how often then throughout the year would you compare yourself to the budget you created? Every month. [00:08:00] Every month.

Suzi: Yeah, we do board meetings once a quarter. But every single month we were updating the staff and everybody where we were hitting.

Suzi: We actually would communicate stuff back to the surgeon’s offices. To say this is what we budget your surgeon, here’s how you’re doing. Surgeons notoriously are competitive by nature. I don’t know if anyone knew that. so public. Accolades for the people that were getting really close to the aggressive budget we set.

Suzi: We made it a fun game and we kept everybody updated with transparency to make sure that we could maximize the impact of that narrative.

Erica: And with that approach, that kind of shoot for the moon approach, do you feel like that actually pushed you and your team to meet benchmarks you maybe wouldn’t have met if you didn’t take that approach?

Erica: 100 percent

Suzi: because we were doing it audacious type goals. Everybody was in it. Everybody was excited. Everyone was like, what can we do? not, Oh, I was just a little short of the budget. Like it was top of [00:09:00] mind all the time and it kept everybody moving in the same direction. So I do think it got us drastically further than we would have achieved if we just sat a reasonable, conservative budget.

Suzi: And I actually can speak on the next part, which I think you’re probably going to do your next audience because my board flipped and the audience changed with the same surgery center and the same players.

Erica: Yeah, tell me about that.

Suzi: We had a different chairman take over, and a different board, and this chairman happened to be very conservative, and he liked the security of knowing that we were meeting budget.

Suzi: He didn’t understand the concept that the boards before had adopted. And so he thought we were drastically failing in our budget all the time. And he couldn’t sleep. Honestly, Matt’s smiling. Cause he knows exactly what I’m talking about. So we had to have those open, honest conversations of Ooh, I missed the mark.

Suzi: I didn’t read my audience. I didn’t adjust to who it was. to do that. So we actually shifted and we actually [00:10:00] compromised in the middle. We don’t go totally normal, but we don’t do as aggressive as I used to do. But I will tell you what we have seen. And Matt, I think you would agree about my numbers is they’re not as motivated as they used to be.

Suzi: Like we still fall under budget about the same place we would have fell under budget with the aggressive budget. Fair, Matt.

Matt: Yeah, that’s fair. And actually, Susie, what I’ll add onto there is the audience is important and it’s what the audience does with the budget that you put in place. If we put a budget in place and the audience really micromanages you to that budget, you’re going to put a budget that you’re going to most likely meet so you don’t have to deal with the ramifications of being micromanaged.

Matt: So if your audience is one that’s going to do that, your budget’s going to be one that you’re going to, you’re going to put it in place. You’re going to do it the right way, but it’s going to be numbers that realistically you think you’re going to hit as opposed to using a budget as a motivational tool to [00:11:00] be, that competitive nature of surgeons to try to always exceed what you’re shooting for.

Matt: That’s just a different way and that’s a different audience and how they react to managing the budget.

Erica: Yeah, it’s super interesting because we always talk about, we’re always going on and on about KPIs, data, reporting, tracking all these metrics. And I’ve never considered that the budget could be part of that conversation.

Erica: I always pictured it as here’s the budget and then here are the five areas we’re trying to improve, days to bill, case volume increase, whatever it might be. But I like the idea of combining the two because to your point, I’m sure that gets so much more buy in to the budget itself.

Erica: People are actually paying attention to it.

Matt: Yeah, to a degree. When you’re creating that aggressive budget, it’s more strategic planning, right? It’s taking the budget and also layering on some strategic planning. So you’re really the entire year, you’re trying to figure out what do I need to do.

Matt: To hit these numbers because you need to make changes and you needed to do things because it is an aggressive [00:12:00] budget and it pushes you to do better.

Suzi: We reverse engineer a lot of things. It’s as we’re talking OKRs. And you do you were talking revenue cycle, like we tie it right back to the budget.

Suzi: If we’re trying to work with the surgeons to decrease the number of days it takes for them to dictate or whatever it is. We are always tying that back to the budget somehow and trying to paint it into the OK ours.

Erica: Yeah, no, I think that’s a really interesting approach. And I’m going to be really interested to hear our listeners if they Or, leave comments like, yeah, we do that too, or if they take, a different approach to it.

Erica: I think that’s really interesting. And so with this kind of new chairman who came on, are you still looking at the budget every month with him, or him or her, just to, process there. So we’ve even moved on to a third chair. Okay.

Suzi: Who inherited he got onto the board under the last chairman.

Suzi: So he was used to the more conservative [00:13:00] budgets. He definitely isn’t as much of a finance guy as other surgeons that I’ve had. So it’s more left to Matt and I and my team, my revenue cycle team. I’m back to going This might be an act of futility every year. Budgets are super important. We always, even when we have the aggressive ones, we knew what we should be hitting or we’re going to be in trouble.

Suzi: That was always there. It just wasn’t on paper. Some centers need that structure and like that structure and like obviously some surgeons. So this one’s not as much like I meet with them all the time, but it’s more about the OKR piece of it, the big goal piece and the data than it is about the budget.

Suzi: Everybody’s just different with their comfort with finances too as well.

Erica: Yeah. And what, when you would get a new chairman, what was your approach to learning their comfort level and what they like to see?

Suzi: Definitely open, transparent, like conversation. Hard way. The first time when we transitioned chairman’s under my reign, [00:14:00] but it’s just conversations to say, Hey, listen, if you give me free reign, this is what I want to do.

Suzi: And it’s super aggressive and it’s going to look like I’m failing like all the time. And we really are going to be like kicking butt, but what is your comfort level? What do you want to see? What does the rest of the board want to see as well? Because it’s not just the chairman. And then also looking at just strategically, what else are you doing with your budget?

Suzi: Because there’s other times and other people that need to see your budget joint commission Always wants to see it when they’re here to make sure you’re doing due diligence. And it is sometimes in creative conversations when we were at the aggressive budgets to say, no, we’re doing this intentionally.

Suzi: And here it has, here’s how it ties in with our goals. But if converse, I think that’s going to be our next area that we’re going. If you have a hospital partner, your budget is going to have to be very meticulous and precise.

Erica: Yes, perfect. Let’s talk about that. So what does that look like if you have some sort of JV relationship with the hospital or health system?

Matt: Yeah, so [00:15:00] I’ll take this a little bit. The biggest thing again, we go back to audience. When you have a hospital joint venture partner with your ASC, it’s a completely different process. Typically when you’re doing those, you the ASC setting. The hospital isn’t going to review that and we’ll say hospitalize it, right?

Matt: They’re going to go through and look at it a little bit differently. They’re going to ask a lot of different questions than, and it’s all valid and it’s all great discussion points. And it just gives you a different perspective when you’re looking at it. But then that budget blends into the hospital budget.

Matt: And that’s why it’s so important to understand the audience and know what you’re hitting because those hospital partners, they have, they track their budgets differently. They meet different metrics for different things. And you’re part of that now when you have a hospital partner, so you need to build that budget to flow into their budget as well and meet the metrics that they need to meet and then track that on a monthly, quarterly, annual basis to make sure you’re doing the things you need to, the other piece of it, when you start talking capital, I think you mentioned that [00:16:00] previously, Hospitals are big on capital budgets.

Matt: A lot of ASCs don’t necessarily budget what their capital expenses are. They know they need certain things when they’re operating. And if they need to get them, they have a conversation with the physician owners and they say, yeah, we need to do this. Let’s get it. Let’s go on the hospital side.

Matt: Typically they budget out for this year, next year, the year after. So they have an understanding of where the cash is going to go. And. When you have that joint venture hospital partner, they act differently and they want you to build more of a capital budget for those expenditures going forward.

Matt: So it’s just a different mindset and it just creates a little bit of not strain, but it just it’s a different way of doing it. And you have to adjust to that.

Erica: Yeah. Do you find, how much guidance does the partner typically give that surgery center admin? Do they give them budget templates?

Erica: Is it, are they doing it together? How does that look? What does that look like?

Matt: I think that it really depends on who your JV partner is. There’s hospital systems that have, several JVs that they’re involved with and they have a, they have departments [00:17:00] that manage their joint ventures and they have all those templates built out.

Matt: And a lot of times they have templates built that they want you to use because then it flows into their system better. So really it’s just, it’s, it depends on the system you’re with. If it’s a hospital joint venture. But they really do provide guidance and they’re there to have conversations and really build a budget that is going to be representative of what the ASC is going to do.

Erica: Yeah, I feel like every time we talk about a JV, there’s just so many pros and cons, but the pro would be, you have this guidance, you have someone to turn to someone who could help you out. The con, of course, is that you get the final say in what the, budget actually looks like. But I would imagine for a lot of administrators who may be just, more of a clinical background, aren’t super comfortable on the business and number side of the house, it’s probably a blessing to have some help there.

Matt: Absolutely.

Erica: Yeah. And how about the, when still JV realm, [00:18:00] do the physicians play any role more so like at all when there’s the JV involved on the budgeting side or same?

Matt: I think that’s really going to depend on the relationship that’s going on in the joint venture, ideally when hospitals are involved in the joint ventures, the reason they’re getting into a relationship with the physicians is the physicians run ASC as well.

Matt: And the physicians are going to still be part of it. So in the case of a joint venture, the hospital wants. Those physicians to take what they were successful with before and continue to do that. And now just have hospital being part of it. Gotcha.

Erica: And Susie, I know you said that you’ve been at would you say 26 years at the 26 years?

Erica: That’s incredible. So, so you personally have not had a ton of experience with the JV side of it. Do you have any thoughts on that? Thing you’ve seen there?

Suzi: No, I, the closest we came is we used to have a management company for probably [00:19:00] the first nine-ish years of the surgery center. And we did have to follow their process because, like Matt said, it filtered up, even if it’s a management company or a hospital, it filters up.

Suzi: And there were they were gracious at the time. I don’t think every center got the luxuries that we did to create a crazy budget. . Our surgeons had a lot to do with no, let the girls do what they want, but no, I don’t have a lot of experience with hospital JV.

Erica: Sure. Yeah, I feel like it’s here’s the budget we’re presenting and then, behind the scenes, it’s here’s our secret budget with all of our wishlist.

Erica: Yeah.

Suzi: The thing that I would say from a surgery center standpoint that I have found as administrator really hard to. wrap our heads around is our building is 26 years old and we have a triple net lease. So we’re responsible for paying anything that all the repairs, all the everything else, there’s a different replacement situation, but the real estate partner wants to know in advance, not just that year, like if they’re going to have to replace something, they don’t want to go, Oh yeah.

Suzi: And [00:20:00] as an administrator, whether you’re clinical or financial, because budgets were Like comfortable for me because I came from the financial side of the house, but trying to anticipate how long an HVAC is going to last or how long a boiler is going to last or any of those things was extremely hard.

Suzi: You do it in your house in a different way of when you’re going to have to replace the roof and when you’re going to have to get a new fridge and whatever. It was so hard, so we have been trying to get more intentional about that, about how do we anticipate those big things, and how do we get vendors in to help educate us on the things that we don’t know with those.

Erica: Sure, and when you were going through that learning process, how did you educate yourself? Was it just time and trial and error and learning, or I know did you rely on the state associations, ASCA, peers? Yes. How’d you get that?

Suzi: Trial and error was horrible. That’s how it became a priority. Of all of a sudden we need a new blanket warmer [00:21:00] everywhere in the building.

Suzi: And that wasn’t equipment that’s top of mind for all of us. It’s the surgical equipment. And then I would say state association is amazing because the vendors with your state association, you mentioned I’m part of the Ohio state, like association in Ohio, and we have a great conference every year in the fall.

Suzi: We’re actually getting ready to have it next week, but we have so many amazing vendors, especially life safety vendors. So there were some life safety vendors that we actually reached out to, to help us with some of the sprinklers and the pool stations that you have to replace. Just. Things that we never dreamed we would know when you start out in the industry.

Suzi: So that was helpful, especially I reach out to some California surgery centers just from being at ASCA and knowing people all over the country because they’re building for older than ours because they started out first, going, how did you wrap your very smart? What did you do? And we’re still learning to be honest with you.

Suzi: It is not easy. Every time we think we’ve got Full catalog of everything. And we’ve [00:22:00] had that vendor that services it. Tell us how much life years, then a curve ball happens. So we haven’t mastered it by any means, but that is where we’re trying to get to.

Erica: Perfect. Thank you both so much for all of the advice you shared today.

Erica: One final question for you. We do this every week with our guests. What is one thing our listeners can do this week to improve their surgery centers?

Suzi: First, you want me to go,

Matt: you go first and then I’ll close it out.

Suzi: So my biggest thing that I talk all the time at the surgery center and they’re sick of me saying is the power of conversations and the power of conversations.

Suzi: Every single conversation you have, whether it’s at your surgery center or home has the ability to either enhance a relationship or diminish it. a little bit at a time. So if you’re not having critical conversations, that’s just as critical. If you’re having them, the tone, the inflection, how you’re listening, all of those things are super important [00:23:00] because you can destroy or enhance that relationship a little bit at a time.

Suzi: So that would be my one thing is concentrate on your part of conversations and start elevating them in your center.

Erica: It’s great advice.

Matt: It’s rather ironic you said that Susie, because, and we did not talk before this all about this question. So, Erica, you threw that one on me, I knew you were going to ask the question, but Susie and I did not talk about it.

Matt: I actually, I did a different approach, AI is huge right now and everything, right? So, I actually went into online and into AI and I asked the question, Give me. An improvement idea an ambulatory surgery center could implement this week. And it came up with enhanced patient communication. There you go.

Suzi: And when you take a step

Matt: back it’s, everything that we do at the surgery center, what it really comes down to is patient care. And it’s a reminder of how important it is to have those communications with the patients, make sure they understand what’s going on and really [00:24:00] provide great patient care.

Matt: Because if we can do that’s one of the best things that can lead to success in the surgery center.

Suzi: And I’m going to tag off real quick off of that AI. Because we are all over this at the Surgery Center AI, and we’re using it in really funky ways. But one of the things that we’re doing is when we don’t have the emotional intelligence to not diminish a relationship, when we’re wanting to communicate something, we’re going into AI and going, Can you please make this professional and clean it up for

Erica: us?

Erica: Love

Suzi: it. It closes the gap of the bandwidth. For us to get in a better head space to actually try to solve and part co partner with our physicians or whoever it is to do that. But we’re using a aisle.

Erica: That’s awesome. I would love to pick your brain after this because we’ve done a few segments on how surgery centers can use a I.

Erica: No integration, no risk, no, no patient data, all of that. So I would love to hear how, what you guys are up to. That’s awesome. Yep.

Matt: Sounds like a great topic for the [00:25:00] future.

Erica: Yeah. You might be coming back, but all thank you both so much for coming on. I appreciate it. Erica, thank you so much.

Erica: Thanks, Erica.

Matt: Appreciate you having us.

Erica: Welcome to Data and Insights, where we turn data into dialogue and numbers into narratives. HST Pathways released an updated version of our annual state of the industry report this past September, highlighting best practices, key process steps, and KPIs for every step of the patient journey and for nearly every recurring administrative duty.

Erica: Most importantly, using our own unique data set from our clients, we were able to extract data points so that anyone in the industry could compare themselves to their peers. Two quick disclaimers, we only pulled data from clients who gave us permission and we omitted any extreme outliers. So today we’re going to talk all about OR block utilization trends.

Erica: Now, before we jump in, If you do [00:26:00] have a printed copy of the state of the industry report, make sure to pull it out right now. Pause this. And we’re actually going to be looking at pages eight and nine. I feel like a teacher. So page eight is going to have all the best practices, key process steps and one chart.

Erica: And then if you flip over to page nine, you’ll see two additional charts as well. You obviously can follow along in the web version. We have the landing page. We have the PDF. I will link to all of this in the episode notes. But I would recommend pulling it up. There are a few different, really interesting ways of looking at block utilization that I think you’ll find interesting.

Erica: For example, we broke it out by number of ORs by specialty and by 2023 numbers compared to 2024. So, if we are looking at OR block utilization, on average, 44 percent of blocked OR time ends up going unused, which obviously represents a huge missed opportunity for revenue and growth. Now, if we look at it by specialty, GI and [00:27:00] ophthalmology do have the highest block time utilization.

Erica: No surprise there, colonoscopies, cataracts, very quick. A lot of procedures coming through, GI has the highest with about 60 percent utilization, ophthalmology has the second with about 57 percent utilization, and then if we go to the opposite end of the spectrum, general as a specialty has the least OR utilization with 18%, and then podiatry has the second to last with 21.

Erica: 4%. Now we did look at 12 different specialties. So I just gave you the two highest and the two lowest. If you fall somewhere in the middle, definitely check out the report so you could see, where your specialty falls. So our data analysts derive these metrics by first identifying the scheduled time blocks allocated to specific physicians.

Erica: Then they determine the percentage of unused time within these blocks by dividing the total amount of unscheduled time by the entire duration [00:28:00] of the block.

Erica: It’s important to note that this metric only takes into account scheduled blocks and does not look at overall unused OR time across the surgery center as a whole. So why does this data point matter? The financial performance of a surgery center is directly impacted by how well it uses its operating room.

Erica: Unused or wasted block time represents missed opportunities for revenue generation. So for example, perhaps there was another physician who could have scheduled surgery at that time, but they were unable to because the big block was there. That directly equates to revenue loss. So by analyzing these block time utilization trends, you can make informed decisions about your scheduling practices.

Erica: What do we need to adjust? Who’s overachieving, underachieving? And you are going to have physicians that have higher unscheduled block times or unused block times than others. And while it might be a tough conversation to have at first, you can use this data point and another data point such as revenue per OR per minute to help all stakeholders [00:29:00] understand the potential opportunity.

Erica: And if you’re not seeing the success that you’d like to, here are a few tips. First, you have to broadcast your open OR availability to your physician offices and schedulers. You, your, the physician offices and the schedulers should be able to access your OR availability at any time using software, and you should also set up automated reminders and updates to let them know when you have a cancellation or an open time.

Erica: This technology is going to be a huge game changer for you, especially if you’re just relying right now on phone calls and faxes and things like that. Second, implementing a 72 hour release policy can help free up some of that block time and allow other surgeons to have enough time to fill those slots.

Erica: All physicians in a perfect world should sign this policy so that there are no surprises and you should also automate email reminders to them to remind them and help them adjust or confirm schedules ahead of time. [00:30:00] Third, we definitely want to recognize and reward high utilization, ideally aiming for 70 percent or more.

Erica: So we all know surgeons are super competitive. So by acknowledging their efficiency, you will just help to motivate the team to maintain that optimal performance. And you should publicize these numbers in the break room of your surgery center, and you should absolutely share these numbers in your board meetings.

Erica: Make it part of your routine. Make it part of the metrics that you’re sharing. Break it down by specialty, by physician, however you can. And lastly, we actually have an excellent podcast episode all about improving block time utilization. So ASC scheduler. Her episode is number 74 and it’s Titled maximizing our utilization through block time optimization.

Erica: So I’d highly recommend giving that a listen for a ton of great tips.

Erica: And as always, I’ll link it right in the episode notes so that you can easily find it. So to quickly summarize, 44 percent of blocked OR time is going [00:31:00] unused at ASCs. If this is a metric that you track, please head over to HST’s LinkedIn page and leave a comment. I would love to hear how you compare and then any tips you have for others to help them improve.

Erica: And if you’re interested in more data points and use cases, subscribe to our podcast so that you don’t miss any upcoming data segments, or head to our website to check out the full state of the industry report to get your hands on even more data. And that officially wraps up this week’s podcast. Thank you, as always, for spending a few minutes of your week with us.

Erica: Make sure to subscribe or leave a review on whichever platform you’re listening from. I hope you have a great day, and we will see you again next week.