Between patient satisfaction, physician satisfaction and employee satisfaction, a Center’s leadership team has a lot on their plates. And not only do they have to keep everyone “satisfied”, they have to do so profitably! (When is your next board meeting? How is the month / quarter looking?)
One of the ways, of course, to aid your profit margins is to do more cases. The old saying, “Volume cures all ills”, appears to apply. So, how do you get the volume? There are two ways: (1) get more cases out of the physicians already working at your center, or (2) get more physicians to use your center. This blog entry focuses on Door #1 – getting more out of the docs you already have coming to your center. There are a couple of ways to get additional cases, especially from those docs who split their cases among more than one surgical location.
(1) How can we fill that hole on Wednesday afternoon? – If a physician’s office knows you have time available, they will keep it in mind when deciding where to schedule a patient and are more likely to book with you rather than a competing facility. So it is imperative that you keep your open times easily accessible to physician offices. Luckily, improvements in technology have provided opportunities for physicians’ offices to use online scheduling for getting their patients on the books. This can be more efficient than the traditional phone call to the ASC’s scheduler, freeing up the scheduler to “ride herd” on the schedule and deal with outlier issues, rather than doing the data entry for Dr A’s three tonsillectomies on Tuesday morning. Whether you let them actually place the cases on the schedule or “request” them, it makes sense to explore these options with your IT vendor. You can also go “old school” by e-mailing or faxing open times on a weekly basis to your schedulers, either way, it is up to you to tilt the decision to your Center rather than somewhere else.
(2) Have a Great Trip, Dr B! – When are your heavy hitters (the docs with the big, weekly block times) going on vacation? Do you know, does your scheduler know? If you don’t, you should. There are few things worse than seeing a big hole in your schedule two weeks from now, all because you did not know that Dr B was going on vacation and you now have an OR sitting empty for 8 hours. By having advance knowledge (i.e. a couple of months) of vacation schedules, you have a terrific opportunity to market that time to other physicians.
(3) Make sure that scheduling with your ASC is an easy process – In line with (1) above, you need to look critically at your scheduling process to ensure that it is efficient, accurate and user-friendly. If it currently consists of multiple phone calls (and “phone tag”), you and your scheduler need to find a way to reduce the number of steps for all involved. Not only will it make the physicians’ schedulers happier, it will reduce the effort involved for your staff, as well.
David Parrott, CASC, is a Principal in Batavia Solutions, an ASC Consulting firm that specializes in managed care contracting and business and operational efficiencies. To find out more about Batavia Solutions and how they might help your Center, send David an e-mail at BataviaSolutions@comcast.net
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