This Week in Surgery Centers: Dr. Justo – Optimizing the Physician Experience: Learning New Procedures

Dr. Justo – Optimizing the Physician Experience: Learning New Procedures

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

We spend a lot of our time talking about the patient experience and patient satisfaction, and rightly so, but what about the physician experience? 🤔

Today kicks off a new, three-part series on the podcast all about Optimizing the Physician Experience, and Dr. Emilio Justo joins us for our first discussion.

Dr. Justo is currently the Medical Director at the Arizona Eye Institute & Cosmetic Laser Center and a well-known speaker and teacher. He is a huge advocate for continuous learning and skill development and shares why physicians need to keep learning new procedures as their careers progress.

⚖️ Balancing Patient Care and Revenue: While still prioritizing patient care, learning new procedures helps physicians and surgery centers increase productivity and financial stability, creating a symbiotic relationship.

🧑‍🎓 Facilitating Continuous Learning: Surgery centers play a crucial role in supporting physicians’ continuous learning by providing block time and necessary supplies. This includes investing in advanced equipment when case volume and physician commitment are justified.

🤝 Inter-Physician Collaboration: Strong relationships among physicians within a surgery center can facilitate the adoption of new technologies.

⭐ A Successful Case Study: Finding a procedure with high patient satisfaction, short procedure times, and improved quality of life will lead to a high referral rate. Dr. Justo has found success in becoming an expert in upper-lid blepharoplasties.

Dr. Justo’s insights underscore the importance of continuous learning, collaboration, and patient-centered care in optimizing the physician experience. For more detailed discussions, check out our latest podcast episode!

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. Today kicks off a new three part series that is all about optimizing the physician experience. We spend a lot of time talking about the patient experience and patient satisfaction, and rightly but keeping your docs happy is incredibly important too.

Erica: So for our first discussion, I am joined by Dr. Emilio Dr. Jusso is currently the medical director at the Arizona Eye Institute and Cosmetic Laser Center, [00:01:00] and he’s also a very well known speaker and teacher. And as a physician himself, Dr. Jusso shares some great insights into what physicians are looking for.

Erica: And then we spend most of our time talking about the benefits of encouraging your doctors to learn new procedures and how you can create an environment at your surgery center that encourages continuous learning and skill development. And after our conversation, we will wrap up the episode with our second installment of our brand new AI segment.

Erica: So similar to last episode, I’ll walk you through a few very safe and very free ways you can start using AI at your surgery center today. Hope everyone enjoys the episode, and here’s what’s going on This Week in Surgery Centers.

 Dr. Justo, welcome to the podcast.

Dr. Justo: Thank you so very much, Erica. It’s a delight and pleasure to be here with you.

Erica: Can you please share a little bit about yourself?

Dr. Justo: [00:02:00] Certainly. I am an ophthalmologist by training. I’ve been in practice now for 35 years, almost starting in a couple months, I’ll be starting my 36th year in practice out in the greater Phoenix metropolitan area.

Dr. Justo: As an ophthalmologist, I have concentrated my efforts on both refractive cataract surgery and also a lot of oculoplastics. And in particular CO2 laser blepharoplasty, which I started doing back in the mid 1990s when the CO2 laser was relatively new. And in addition to my ophthalmology and physician experience, I’m also a two time international TEDx speaker.

Dr. Justo: I just published my first solo authorship book just a few weeks ago called The Power of Pause, Mastering Delayed Gratification for Success. And I do some public speaking in my TEDx office. [00:03:00] spare time. So I have a bunch of different gigs that I enjoy doing.

Erica: Very cool. Congrats on the book.

Erica: You’ll have to send me a link to it. So I’ll put it in the episode notes if anyone wants to check it out.

Dr. Justo: Fantastic. I appreciate that.

Erica: Yeah. So I’m excited to have you on today because you are kicking off our three week, three week series on optimizing the physician experience. So at a high level, what does that look like to you?

Erica: What do you think physicians are really looking for? What are they looking for in a surgery center?

Dr. Justo: They’re looking for a variety of different things. Number one, they’re looking for patient safety. Of course, they’re looking for exceptional outcomes and a great patient experience. They’re also looking to. generate revenue for themselves and for the surgery center. So there are multiple different components that fall into that question, which is really a great introductory question.

Erica: Yeah. So [00:04:00] how does learning new procedures benefit physicians both professionally and financially?

Dr. Justo: I think professionally it gives the physician A chance to build a certain brand awareness of something that they can offer that maybe they’re exceptional at that they’re going to be known for, like in my case, I’m very well known for the CO2 laser blepharoplasty. I’m blessed that I have patients that travel from out of state and from all over Arizona to come in to see me.

Dr. Justo: And that’s something that has been. just a slowly developing insidious process that has occurred over the years. And it’s something that I take very seriously because it really humbles me to see that. So I think from a physician standpoint being able to brand yourself and develop a certain expertise is [00:05:00] important professionally.

Dr. Justo: And again let’s face it, so even though. As physicians, we’re called to do the best for our patients. And I firmly believe that I firmly believe in treating our patients as if they’re my own family and I do my best at the same time, this is a business and as a business we want to generate revenue and not at the cost of sacrificing integrity or morals or ethics or anything like that.

Dr. Justo: But we do want to generate. revenue. And learning new procedures, which I think we’ll talk more about, I hope is really key to generating that revenue. And when the physician generates revenue, the surgery center generates revenue. So it makes for a nice, happy marriage between the physician and the surgery center.

Erica: Perfect. And how can surgery centers create that environment? And is it even up to the surgery center to create that environment that encourages that continuous [00:06:00] learning and skill development?

Dr. Justo: I think in part, certainly I think the surgery center is and should be accommodating to the surgeon learning new procedures. And of course, each surgery center is going to have their own way of credentialing physicians in doing certain procedures. For example, in the case of laser blepharoplasty I’m a proponent, a very strong proponent that pretty much any physician, MD or DO, any physician can learn to do this procedure safely and effectively and create fantastic outcomes for their patients.

Dr. Justo: Even if they’re non surgically trained, so you don’t have to be a surgeon quote unquote, I Have had just recently a dermatologist, I had an internist an internal medicine doctor that works in the hospital, a hospitalist come in for training. [00:07:00] So I think the surgery center can help facilitate this.

Dr. Justo: Certainly first and foremost, it has to come from the doctor, his or herself, that they need to have the proper care. motivation to expand their horizons and want to increase their productivity, their revenue create a new brand whereby they can help their patients perhaps in a new and different way from what they traditionally have done in the past.

Dr. Justo: And by doing so, this helps feed into the things that this doctor is already doing. And so it creates a circle of What I call internal marketing within the office where certain things can feed to the, in my case, blepharoplasty, and then the blepharoplasty can potentially feed into the other things. That the doctor is offering.

Dr. Justo: So there can be a wonderful symbiotic [00:08:00] relationship between all of this. And again I couldn’t feel any more strongly about this.

Erica: Yeah. And, okay, so if you’re a, let’s say you’re a surgery center administrator or a scheduler, you work at the surgery center and one of your physicians comes to you and says, Hey, I’m working on learning this new skill, this new, I want to introduce this new procedure.

Erica: What, how can the surgery center support? Is it by giving them some block time, making sure they have the right supplies? What does that look like?

Dr. Justo: Clearly it does require providing the surgeon the, let’s call it block time to be able to operate and providing them the proper supplies.

Dr. Justo: And sometimes it may require if one wants to do blepharoplasty, for example, With the CO2 laser, blepharoplasty can be done in other ways and quite effectively, I might add. In my case, I specialize in using the CO2 laser, but [00:09:00] keep in mind the CO2 laser is a very expensive piece of equipment.

Dr. Justo: And it’s one that, that in the case of performing it in a surgery center venue, the surgery center would need to acquire that there’d have to be some sort of commitment on the part of the physician that they’re going to really be doing this procedure long term and are going to be doing a certain minimum volume to, to make it financially worthwhile for the surgery center.

Dr. Justo: In the meantime the other option would be for the physician to perform the blepharoplasty. without the CO2 laser, right? Using either electrocautery, using radio frequency devices, or there’s absolutely nothing wrong with the so called old fashioned way, which is how I was trained back in the mid to late 1980s, which is basically with a scalpel and scissors.

Dr. Justo: Effectively the outcome is going to be the same. It’s just that the procedure is so much nicer and cleaner to do [00:10:00] when you do it with other technologies.

Erica: Yes, I can see that. And what is the conversation like amongst. The physicians on the the physician to physician level. So if one physician wants to bring this in, obviously there’s some expense and risk involved.

Erica: What are those conversations look like? Do other physicians, are they typically open to that?

Dr. Justo: I think if you, if one as a physician has a good relationship with other physicians in the surgery center, and perhaps more than one physician is going to be performing that surgery, then it really becomes a no brainer in terms of acquiring the technology, right?

Dr. Justo: It may be more challenging if it’s just one physician at the surgery center doing a very limited number of cases. But if, even if it were just one or two physicians, again if that person or persons can demonstrate that they indeed are bringing in a certain minimum volume of [00:11:00] cases, then it’s just a matter of putting pen to paper and doing some math and coming up with a pro forma to determine, okay, how financially feasible is it to acquire in this case, a CO2 laser.

Dr. Justo: Again, I can respect the fact that the surgery center may possibly want to see first a certain level of cases and see that they’re coming in on a regular basis before investing, 100, 000 or 150, 000 into a piece of equipment. I get it. I totally get it.

Erica: Yes, that makes sense. You’ve mentioned the upper eyelid blepharoplasty a few times. Why does that procedure in particular ring so true to you? What, why does, what are the kind of the top reasons for incorporating? that one specific procedure?

Dr. Justo: Great question. And you’re tugging on my heartstrings here because to me in particular upper lid blepharoplasty, one can have a discussion on lower lid blepharoplasty, but the reason I [00:12:00] bring up upper lid blepharoplasty is for so many different reasons.

Dr. Justo: Number one I feel strongly that it’s one of the most undervalued and underutilized procedures out there and upper lid blepharoplasty brings Such contentment, such satisfaction to the patient, such joy, both aesthetically as well as functionally meaning that they have improved peripheral vision.

Dr. Justo: They have less heaviness of the eyes. They less, they have less fatigue. of the eyes. These are real things and I see it day in and day out. So anyone who would challenge that, I would go to the mat telling them that they’re incorrect. It’s a procedure that if you’re doing upper lid blepharoplasty, it takes operative time.

Dr. Justo: It takes 20 minutes to do a bilateral upper lid blepharoplasty. And one can do it either purely under local anesthesia. [00:13:00] One can do it with or without a little oral valium. One can do it with or without a little mild conscious IV sedation. Regardless, the patient experience is exceptional. The patients refer more patients.

Dr. Justo: That’s pretty much how that aspect of my practice has grown so much over the years. It’s not that we go out advertising this procedure. It’s all word of mouth and I get referrals from people all over the Phoenix metropolitan area from med spas and from other physicians who I know nothing about.

Dr. Justo: I, I’ve never heard of them. I haven’t heard their names and somehow they’re referring to me. It’s really quite an incredible thing. Upper lid blepharoplasty is something that can be taught very safely, very effectively. The surgery center can get nice revenue in terms of a [00:14:00] facility fee. One can do it as a physician.

Dr. Justo: One can do it for purely aesthetic or cosmetic. reasons, which would of course be a self pay or out of pocket surgery, but also, we, in our practice, we also specialize in being able to get many of these patients who have significant excess skin and significant drooping. We can get them authorized under their insurance.

Dr. Justo: What a great win. The patients love that. They may be responsible for their own health. a co insurance or co payer deductible, but they expect that because they’re going to, they have other medical expenses. So they understand that. The the ASC, the surgery center gets a nice facility fee.

Dr. Justo: remarkably. So it’s just a marriage made in heaven. And, I actually do a full three day intensive laser blepharoplasty workshop in our practice [00:15:00] where I teach physicians to do laser upper lid blepharoplasty from nuts to bolts

Dr. Justo: so it’s really something that I’m committed to. I really feel like it’s my life’s work at this point in my career. I want to try and get it out there to as many physicians as possible.

Erica: Yeah, that’s amazing. And if I could repeat some of that back to you. So whether it’s this specific procedure or similar ones people are looking to maybe bring on or learn, you’re really looking for the, that.

Erica: Unicorn of, make that short procedure time. Maybe it’s just local anesthesia with or without oral sedation increased revenue and that patient satisfaction piece, because that’s where you’re getting all those word of mouth referrals.

Dr. Justo: Absolutely. You couldn’t have summarized it better. And again, I cannot tell you enough, the patient satisfaction that it brings.

Dr. Justo: These are happy patients who feel great about themselves. [00:16:00] Who tell all their friends and all of a sudden you start seeing their friends. It is just an incredible process that once you experience it as a physician or as a surgery center administrator, you really will understand the powerful effect that it has.

Erica: Love it. All right. Dr. Justo, we do this every week with our guests. What is one thing our listeners can do this week to improve their surgery centers?

Dr. Justo: Eric, I think that the main thing they can do is to really think outside the box, right? As physicians sometimes, and I’ve been guilty of this time and time again, my wife even tells me that Sometimes I think too much inside the box. You really have to think outside the box. What is it that I could do differently?

Dr. Justo: Could I bring a new procedure? To my menu of services again, I keep referencing the laser blepharoplasty because that’s my gig, but there could be [00:17:00] something different that maybe you could bring to the table and learn something that can be learned. Postgraduate, if you will, which is how I learned many of my other procedures that I’ve done over the years, such as facelifts, liposuction, endoscopic brow lifts.

Dr. Justo: I learned those all postgraduate. The blepharoplasty I learned during my residency, but but think outside the box as a physician consider learning a new procedure. Get some continuing medical education credit while you’re at it and and consider bringing it to your surgery center.

Dr. Justo: Discuss it maybe with the surgery center administrator. See how it can be a win for both of you to again, bring patient satisfaction and enjoyment, bring financial revenue to both the practice, the surgeon, as well as the surgery center and and help decrease some of the stress [00:18:00] and burnout that some physicians experience by doing the same thing over and over.

Dr. Justo: Just think outside the box and let your imagination just take you wherever it wants. That’s my advice.

Erica: That is excellent advice. Thank you so much for coming on and sharing all your helpful tips with us today.

Dr. Justo: Thank you, Eric. It’s been a delight to chat with you and goodbye to all your listeners and viewers.

Yeah.

Erica: Welcome to our AI segment where I will share safe, free and helpful ways you can start using generative AI at your surgery center today.

Erica: Now, if you have reservations about using A. I. or have concerns about how it will be safely implemented in healthcare, that’s okay. Having a healthy level of skepticism is good. However, that should not stop you from at least dipping your toe in and starting to familiarize yourself with A. I. both personally [00:19:00] and professionally.

Erica: Similar to last episode, the examples I will share are simply administrative. They don’t include any PHI or pose any data risks to you at all, so you should feel very comfortable getting started. Last time, I talked through how you can use ChatGPT to create staffing schedules, write patient education materials, and create post op instructions.

Erica: Today, we’ll cover a few new ideas for your surgery center’s website and social media channels. Okay, let’s start with your website. So most surgery centers don’t pay too much attention to their websites. Not all but most, which is unfortunate because a strong website can help increase patient trust, improve upfront collections reduce redundant time consuming phone calls and so much more.

Erica: And one roadblock that doesn’t help is not knowing what to say on your website or how to write it. So AI tools can help you [00:20:00] generate your website’s navigation, all the pages that go across the top, and even create compelling text and eye catching images. So here are a few different prompts and ways you can use ChatGPT or your preferred AI tool to help you out.

Erica: So let’s say you have a website and you’re redoing it or you’re building a website from scratch or just want some ideas, you can say to your favorite AI tool, my surgery center is redoing our website. Can you please create the site map or pages that should be included on my site along with a content outline per page?

Erica: So if you’re working on your website and you’re just not sure, like what do patients even want to see? What do I have to say? Sometimes there’s compliance. Regulations and requirements you have to take into account. You could ask chat GPT exactly all of that. So a prompt like that will give you ideas for what pages you need to build out.

Erica: Maybe it’s an about us page [00:21:00] listing your physicians, billing information, what to expect pre op and post op and more. But within seconds, you could see. Chat GPT’s recommendations versus your existing site, maybe give you spark some ideas for new pages that you should create, whatever it might be.

Erica: So all of that to say, it can help you with kind of the sitemap, either navigation and those pages that your patients and partners want to see. So another prompt imagine you’re bringing on a new physician and she does a procedure that none of your other doctors do. You can say, please write a blog post that explains what CPT code 49505 for a hernia repair does.

Erica: How it can change a patient’s life, what to expect during the procedure, and any FAQs. So instead of spending hours crafting this blog post yourself, you can immediately [00:22:00] have a well structured article in minutes. Now, of course, you want to review it, tweak it, but let’s say, it can get you 90 95 percent of the way there, it can be extremely helpful.

Erica: And sticking with that same scenario that you’re bringing on a new physician it could help you write a press release. It could help you write an email to local media. It can help you draft an email to your current patient and partner database. It can help you write an email to, the physician scheduler, to your staff, whatever it might be.

Erica: Bringing on a new physician does require some level of internal and community education. So chat GPT can help you with all of that. Another idea. Let’s say you wrote a few sentences, but don’t really love how it turned out. You can share what you have with chat GPT and ask it to improve and expand.

Erica: I do this all the time. Let’s say I’m writing a social post and I know the gist of what I want to say. I want to get these benefits [00:23:00] across. I want this call to action. You can do that. Share what you have already written, even if you hate it. And it could help improve and expand.

Erica: So let’s say the text you have for your website is welcome to Brantford surgery center. We have top notch providers, highly trained nurses and compassionate staff. We are conveniently located right off I 95 and we look forward to making your surgical experience as seamless and comfortable as possible.

Erica: It’s good, but it’s not great. After asking AI to help, you’ll have so much more to work with. It could take your, even if it’s bullet points, three to four bullet points, three to four short sentences and expand it into a beautiful few paragraphs for you. And it’s not just about text. AI can also help you create images for your site. Sometimes within a surgery center, especially operating rooms or the waiting room, if you don’t have natural light, it could be really hard to find a time of day that makes sense to take a [00:24:00] picture that, won’t have patients in it, whatever it might be. Whether it’s your operating room you need a photo of or the lobby, you could say something like, please create an image for me showing a surgery center operating room with a friendly nurse and team of doctors.

Erica: Even if you don’t love that first image that shows because you could have that back and forth dialogue, you can say actually, please, remove the stethoscope from the from the doctor’s neck add more surgical equipment into the photo, change the overhead lighting to be X, Y, and Z at a hand washing station, whatever it might be, you could have that back and forth dialogue until you can get the exact image that you want.

Erica: And then other prompts for images, you could say something like, can you please create an image of an eye doctor greeting a patient? Can you please create an image of a diverse group of nurses? Lots of options you can use to generate those images. And [00:25:00] lastly, you can actually upload an image of your website or any page on your site and ask chat GPT for design and content recommendations.

Erica: So you could say something like, here’s a screenshot of my home page. What would you change to make it more user friendly for a patient? Or you could upload a screenshot of maybe, your billing information page or like patient responsibility, whatever, wherever you keep your financial information.

Erica: And you could say, we’re not getting a ton Of, or we’re looking for ways to improve our upfront collections. Where should I add a call to action buttons and links to change that? Plenty of ideas and really endless possibilities for how AI can help you with your website. And if everything I just shared sparked any ideas, or if you’ve used it, AI to help you with your surgery center’s website, please go to YouTube or find this LinkedIn post and leave a comment.

Erica: I would love to hear how you’re doing. And the second topic I want to cover today is social media. Now I know not every ASC [00:26:00] has a social presence, but sharing content on at least Facebook can be really beneficial for your surgery center, but keeping up with a consistent posting schedule can be super challenging.

Erica: So here’s how AI can make it easier. The first thing I would do is ask AI to build you a cal build me a calendar. So you can ask it something like, I run a Facebook page for Surgery Center. I want to post three times per week to Facebook on the days that will have the most engagement. I would like to cover a range of topics such as news, our physicians, our staff, holidays, and other topics you would suggest.

Erica: Please create a calendar for me covering the months of September through December. And there you have it. It’s going to give you out a bulleted list, what day you should post, what the topic should be, and then content ideas for that topic. So you’ll have a full calendar of ideas.

Erica: And of course you could pick and choose and rearrange and based on birthdays or whatever it might, anniversaries community events, you could always of course change it. [00:27:00] You can then take that calendar and go one step deeper. So you can say for the staff spotlight post on September 16th, I plan to feature Gabriella.

Erica: She has been with us for 10 years as a PACU nurse. She mentors her peers. She’s known for her punctuality and for staying calm in stressful situations. Can you please write a caption? And now you have your post for Gabriella in seconds. And if you also want to export your engagement data from Facebook, so let’s say you, you do this for two months and you want to take it even further and continue to improve, export that engagement data, you can upload it to your favorite AI tool so it can analyze your audience’s behavior and suggest maybe better times or days to post.

Erica: Cause I know we asked Chachi Petit in the beginning to give us a calendar with the best days, but everyone’s community, everyone’s followers. Everyone’s, industry is a little different. So by uploading your [00:28:00] specific audience’s behavior AI or chat GPT can take it, help you take it to the next level.

Erica: And there you have it, a bunch of examples for how you can start using AI at your surgery center today to help help you with your website and help you with your social media presence.

Erica: Now the examples I gave a few weeks ago and the examples I gave today could be very impactful when it comes to lessening the burden of some of these low level or mundane administrative tasks. And now that we’ve set a good foundation, I hope our next AI segment on August 27th. We’ll take it a step further and get more into how you can use AI for data analysis at your surgery center.

Erica: And that officially wraps up this week’s podcast. Thank you as always for spending a few minutes of your week with us. 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.

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