At Becker's ASC 21st Annual Meeting, Becky Ziegler-Otis, administrator of Surgical Center of Stevens Point (Wis.), Lynne Stoldt, administrative director of Melbourne (Fla.) Same Day Surgery and Melbourne GI Center, Michelle George, vice president of clinical services at Surgical Care Affiliates and Vicki Schultz, president of Texas Health Women's Specialty Surgery Center of Dallas, discussed the benefits of adopting an online preoperative screening program and the criteria their centers used when creating a system or selecting a vendor partner.
The panelists all spoke to the time and cost saving benefits realized at their centers through the adoption of online preoperative screening. "The biggest benefit our centers would attest to would be doing what you want to do when you want to do it," said Ms. George. At the Ambulatory Surgical Center of Stevens Point, moving preoperative screening online has allowed the center to save on labor costs by minimizing the amount of time nurses spend scheduling patients on the phone and maximizing the amount of time staff spends working directly with patients. Ms. Ziegler-Otis spoke to the benefits the center has seen through "taking nurses off the phone and putting scheduling in the hands of the patient."
Next, Ms. Schultz discussed the criteria her center used to determine and implement the best preoperative screening program for her center. She advised centers to "survey your population and determine your patient base" before deciding what is important to include in the system. Ms. Ziegler-Otis related how her center made decisions based on the importance of agility and flexibility in a preoperative screening program which would allow them the streamline questions and tailor the information gathering process to their patient base. Ms. George recommended that administrators "talk to as many vendors as you possible can… go to places where a system is up and running and live vicariously with them a little bit. Talk to some end-users, either patients, with permission, or preoperative nurses to get a better sense of it."
The panel concluded by discussing the importance of communicating with physicians to ensure buy-in from their offices. Ms. Stoldt spoke to how communication with physicians has led to the positive response Melbourne Same Day Surgery and Melbourne GI Center have seen to adoption. "We were amazed… we have found so many people who think it's awesome. We have patient pamphlets that go into every surgeon's office that include directions to our website. It's been an amazing product."
Ms. Schultz said in her center, distributing cut sheets with information on the process has been critical to the success of the program. However, Ms. George cautioned that SCA works with some physician offices that have embraced new technological innovations in scheduling, while some are still committed to manual scheduling, and stressed the importance of not adopting a "one-size-fits-all" approach.