This Week in Surgery Centers: Highlight Reel – What is one thing you can do this week to improve your surgery center?

Highlight Reel – What is one thing you can do this week to improve your surgery center?

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

At the end of every podcast episode, we always ask our guests, “What is one thing our listeners can do this week to improve their surgery centers?”

For this week’s episode, we compiled the most recent responses we’ve had, bringing together the best advice from 7 different ASC leaders.

We hope everyone enjoys this round-up of practical, innovative ideas. A huge thank you to our featured guests, in order of appearance:

• BJ DiMartini, Excel Health

• Marsha Diamond, Aidéo Technologies

• Kathy Wilson, ASC Quality Collaboration

• David Thawley, HST Pathways

• John Brock, SurgNet Health Partners

• Maura Cash, HST Pathways

• Scott Bacon, Compass Surgical Partners

Find the full episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or YouTube to hear all the details.

Episode Transcript

0:01
Welcome to This Week in Surgery Centers.

0:03
If you’re in the ASC industry, then you’re in the right place.

0:07
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.

0:17
We’re excited to share with you what we have.

0:19
So let’s get started and see what the industry’s been up to.

0:27
Hi everyone.

0:28
Here’s what you can expect on today’s episode.

0:31
Today is one of my favorite episodes that we put together.

0:35
There will be no guest interview and no news, but instead a highlight reel of all the great advice our most recent guests have shared.

0:44
Since the start of the year we have had so many ASC leaders on our podcast and at the end of every discussion we always ask them what is one thing our listeners can do this week to improve their surgery centers.

0:58
So we took seven of their answers and turned them into this week’s recap episode.

1:04
Again, this is one of my favorite episodes that we do, so I hope you all enjoy what we put together.

1:10
And before I forget, we are just a few weeks away from Asca in Orlando.

1:15
HSC has so many fun things planned for the show, so I hope to see you all there.

1:21
And when you swing by our booth, which is right next to Asca’s, it’s booth number seven O 9.

1:26
You can take a quiz to win a prize.

1:28
You can give all of our products a test drive and we are currently scheduling one-on-one demos and conversations if that’s more your speed.

1:36
And then we do have two speaking sessions, one on Thursday, April 18th titled Unleash the Power of Data to Transform Your ASC, and then one on Friday, April 19th titled How to Prepare for and Navigate board Level Conversations.

1:52
So if you want to learn more, just go to hscpathways.com/ASCA for all the logistics.

1:58
And I do really hope you all swing by to say hello.

2:02
So without further ado, I hope everyone enjoys the episode and here’s what’s going on this week in surgery centers.

2:13
Spend the time with your staff making sure that they’re not just walking by a patient.

2:19
Make eye contact, introduce yourself.

2:22
Those connections last eternity of the patient will end up leaving and may not remember if they’ve had anaesthesia necessarily, but their loved one will and and then the patient will remember all the prior experience up until the anesthesia kicks in that how they were treated is is different from the way that they’ve been treated in other healthcare settings.

2:44
And so that is to me is probably the most important thing you can do because it not only reflects how your brand or how your image will be outgoing, but usually there’s four or five other people that are waiting to hear back from that patient of how well we did on our end.

3:04
They’re going to want to know how they feel.

3:06
And there’s five people waiting just because they probably need some help, they might need another type of treatment option and they want to hear a good experience before they make up their mind on where they go.

3:17
So that’s the kind of the organic referral or holistic referral way of going about it by delivering good care in that moment.

3:25
So it starts with the staff and little touch points on every department of where that patient flows through and how they’re treating each person.

3:34
So I I think that if you spend time with that’s where you get your good marks on your patient experience surveys and ultimately a good patient experience survey can lead to a great quality outcomes survey.

3:46
So it kind of extends on down the line and just, you know, improve your experience for the patients and connect with your employees.

3:54
And I think everyone will ultimately feel that.

3:57
I would say that the main thing that they can do is if they’re going to use AI, let the AI do what it does best and let the coders do what they do best.

4:06
And by that, I mean the AI may be better at some of the more routine tasks.

4:12
So again, taking my example before of that chest X-ray, that is for a coder A relatively simple task and they can do a ton of those an hour probably with their eyes closed.

4:23
But those are the kinds of tasks that AI does best.

4:26
So, you know, prioritize things and use your staffing and I think of AI as staffing.

4:32
Use your staff wisely and use the AI where it can best be used and give you the most productivity, the most consistency, the best turn around and use your coders where they can best be used on things like working those denials, making sure that you’re compliant and providing the audits that you need, etcetera.

4:51
So it’s all about using your resources wisely and making sure that you’re using your coders wisely and you’re AI wisely in your organization on a daily basis.

5:02
I would say go back to the basics.

5:05
Sometimes that’s what we need to do.

5:08
And as we’ve been discussing, I think you really have to just take a step back with wrong site surgery prevention and make sure all those verification steps, the timeouts are in place, monitor it, look to see that it’s being done and that it’s being recorded as such.

5:27
So sometimes we can get so busy and so involved in intricacies of quality programs, but we have to go back to the basics and think about the impact on patients.

5:43
So this is just such a key measure in maintaining patient safety and everyone in the facility needs to understand how critical it is that if they’re assigned a process as part of this that it’s carried out consistently for every single patient.

6:00
Great question other than driving towards proactive operations.

6:04
The the ASC industry is still in the very early innings of what is possible and now I believe it’s over 40% of surgical volume in the United States is going through ASC versus hospitals.

6:18
And I don’t think it’s going to be that long before it’s a 5050 split.

6:21
And so understanding that there is growth and opportunity in ASC environment, but it’s much newer than the rest of healthcare.

6:31
I I think I go back to the earlier comment that business is a team sport and surrounding yourself inside your business with the best possible teammates, but also outside of the ASC building relationships with peers in the industry and other centers and center administrators to understand you know what lessons they’ve learned, what investments they’ve made that have helped them become successful in sharing in some of that success.

6:56
And scar tissue to ultimately Dr.

6:59
Collective growth I I think is a great idea And if there is avenues such as ASCA, the Ambulatory Surgery Center Association, which is a great forum both in their conferences as well as the online community to ask questions and share best practices.

7:14
But there’s also, you know, grabbing coffees with the neighboring ASC down the street and talking about their journey and understanding how you can share some of these best practices.

7:23
I think just building that community of peers and mentors will will be highly correlated with driving additional success and helping to achieve some of these incremental goals.

7:33
We’ll talk about today, listen to, spend time with your constituents, you know, assuming your listeners, maybe your administrators or whatnot.

7:43
Spend time with your docs, visit with them, get into work early when maybe every room is full, and catch these guys when they finish before they go to the office.

7:53
Spend time with your staff, you know go sit down and pack you and and chat with the nurses or go to materials and chat with those staff and pick a patient or two to go visit with before in pre op and introduce yourself and say hi and tell them you’re glad that that they’re there and tell them you’re going to take good care of them and then how much it means to you that they’re there.

8:16
Yeah, that’s pretty easy.

8:18
One, in terms of what I think it is critical for the relationship piece of operating the center, well, all I can say is keeping in line with the OAS caps, many of us are not happy with the burden both financial and education will incur with this survey.

8:36
But we need to look at the silver lining, learn what you can then use it to improve the patient experience at your center.

8:45
Because while CMS is focused on collecting data for the patient experience, the center is focused on the actual patient experience.

9:00
So use the data, don’t just, oh, we have to sign up for the survey, OK.

9:05
We picked this vendor and they’re going to do it and they’re going to send in the results and that’s great.

9:09
We’re done here.

9:10
Use the survey results to make incremental changes so that your patients always walk away saying that is the best procedure I’ve ever had.

9:22
And there are good and there are bad and there are levels of good and bad.

9:26
And as long as you are eeking your patients up the chain to the best level that you can be, I think that it’s a win.

9:38
Great question.

9:39
My my wheels are turning.

9:40
I would say first and foremost we take very seriously compass the care being delivered to each and in every individual patient.

9:50
That’s a very serious life event for a family and and the patient on the table and that that care is delivered by the front end clinical staff at the ambulatory surgery center.

10:03
So what can be done this week?

10:04
I would say make sure your clinical team on site delivering that patient care understands they’re valued, understands their how important they are to each and every patient that comes across that table.

10:17
And and really just thank them for their work, their commitment and their passion that they deliver these patients day in and day out.