Q: What external benchmarking initiatives did your surgery center embark on?
Joe Ollayos: Our center started participating in several different external benchmarking activities. First and foremost is the National ASC Association’s Outcomes Monitoring Project. There are 500-600 ASCs that submit information to the association on a quarterly basis, and then the Association compiles the information and creates statistical comparisons on a whole range of quality indicators, such as post-operative infections per thousand, complications per thousand and transfers to hospital per thousand. Aside from clinical indicators, we are also able to compare ourselves in terms of business-related indicators, including staffing hours per case and number of days in A/R. This project allows us to compare ourselves against other ASCs’ outcomes.
We also participated in two studies in 2009 with AAAHC’s Institute for Quality Improvement. Through those studies, we were able to do some external benchmarking specifically for colonoscopies and cataracts — our two most common procedures — on a number of different statistics. One of the key process indicators was discharge times, and our surgery center fell right in the middle of the pack for both procedures. We didn’t want to lag or discharge too quickly.
Q: What other ways are you incorporating external benchmarking exercise into your center?
JO: There is an organization — Medical Group Management Association — which publishes an ASC financial performance survey every year or so. Our surgery center purchased the most recent edition and did some comparisons on several key indicators, such as supply cost per case for colonoscopies and cataracts. We could then document that our costs fell right in the median. The statistics and salary data from VMG Intellimarker have also been very useful.
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