Debra Saxton Stinchcomb, RN, a consultant at Progressive Surgical Solutions, offers seven points on recruiting more physicians to an ambulatory surgery center.
1. Start while you are still busy. Effective recruiting requires a lot of advance spadework over many years. If you wait until volume is down, there will be no time to prepare.
2. Meet face-to-face. Rather than a phone call, a face-to-face meeting with the physician, scheduler or administrator at the practice demonstrates that you value their business. It also gives you a chance to establish rapport.
3. Be brief. Keep the visits short, around 5-10 minutes. This will help build a cordial relationship. It takes very little time to get through a list of well prepared questions.
4. Contact everyone. Use a complete list of surgeons in the community. Contact everyone, even investors in another ASC. It could turn out the ASC has been sold and the surgeons are not happy with the new situation. There might be a non-compete clause barring them from investing in another ASC, but they probably would be allowed to just do cases at a competitor, Ms. Stinchcomb says.
5. Remember the details. If a surgeon tells you he prefers an 8 a.m. slot on Thursdays, hold on to that information and call him back if that time comes up on your ASC's schedule. Preserving these details requires a good record-keeping system.
6. Vary frequency of contact. While you should contact everyone on your list, frequency of contacts can vary, depending on your odds of recruiting them or their importance to the center. Some surgeons might be contacted once a year, while others might be contacted every month or every quarter.
7. Assess surgeons' satisfaction. Any concerns your own surgeons might have about the facility would probably mirror the attitudes of outside surgeons. Periodically assess surgeon satisfaction in a formal way. Stopping surgeons in the hallways and asking them if they are happy will not produce the thoughtful, measured responses you are looking for. Send surgeons a formal survey with a few questions covering the most important topics, such as turnover, block times and staff. The results will help you identify problems as well as selling points.
Learn more about Progressive Surgical Solutions.