Naya Kehayes, Michael McClain, and Conor Gallagher, of Eveia Health, a management and consulting firm in the healthcare industry, hosted a webinar with Becker's Healthcare titled "ASC Business Operations Checkup."
The panel touched on how ambulatory surgery centers can best set specific benchmarks to monitor performance, manage payor contracts, and more.
Having a third party conduct a combined business and clinical operations assessment can be of great benefit to an ASC because it provides the opportunity to improve the bottom line and overall operating performance throughout the organization.
A common pitfall in healthcare organizations is the separation of the business office mission from the patient care mission. Mr. Gallagher suggests that ASCs should begin by working backwards: first defining excellence at each stage of business office and financial process. Keep in mind, each center's definition of excellence will be unique to the specific market and special services of that center. However, it's crucial to review these individual elements of performance and manage to the goals on a consistent basis, by carving out specific time each month.
"Set measurable goals at the functional levels, collect data routinely and put plans in place to make corrections or provide rewards when appropriate," said Mr. Gallagher. "While revenue can solve a lot of problems, it can also lull you into a false sense of confidence. You should feel good about your center, but you should also look at what higher level of performance is possible for your [specific] center, and not just rest on past performance."
The webinar also touched on:
• Optimizing the P&L to match cost, managed care, and operations benchmarks
• The importance of routinely evaluating payer contracts
• Defining joint financial and clinical benchmarks
"Be careful when focusing only on clinical outcomes and patient satisfaction," said Mr. McClain. "You must always strive to marry the financial efficiency and clinical efficiency with patient's care and comfort. That is the real definition of clinical excellence.
When trying to define clinical excellence, it may be helpful to visualize the idea of 'clinical excellence' as a merger of cost efficiency, physician satisfaction and patient satisfaction. While many facilities may understand that principal, the use of a third party can help identify even more opportunities for improvement.
Engaging an outside organization to help with business office audits, mock surveys, or clinical operations analysis can benefit ASCs of any size or structure in evaluating and improving performance excellence. While no one product can cover all ASCs as their performance evaluation is based on many specific geographic and business factors, it is best to use a combination of tools to continuously challenge ASC leaders and physicians to improve on multiple fronts.
To download slides from the webinar, click here.