1. Marketing to patients indirectly. It’s common practice for ASCs to post advertisements marketing various specialties and procedures, but one strategy ASCs should consider is actively engaging the outside community and indirectly marketing the facility to help build patient volume. Ms. Braden says fostering strong relationships among ASC physicians and staff members and community members helps with word-of-mouth marketing and also leaves a great impression on prospective patients. “You’ve got to market to the community about what a valuable resource your ASC is and be involved in community activity,” she says. “So ASC physicians should try to be at the YMCA or supporting the community senior fair by doing foot and ankle checks. You’ve got to have your physicians and staff on the forefront as much as possible in community.”
Directing this indirect marketing mindset toward already existing patients helps ensure they remain loyal as well. “We want our patients to always come back to Marysville Surgical Center, and many of them do,” Ms. Braden adds.
2. Give physicians a reason to stay at your ASC. Attention should also be paid to physicians who are not owners of the ASC. Mr. Braden says ASCs should strive to ensure physicians enjoy working at your particular ASC because ultimately they are the ones driving patient volume and profitability. “My goal is to have them look forward to coming here. It’s in the little things like making sure their locker is clean, their favorite drink is always stocked in the refrigerator and their cases are running on time and efficiently,” she says.
Another way to retain great physicians is demonstrating to them that the ASC they work at is a leader in quality outcomes and patient satisfaction. Marysville Surgical Center asks every patient at registration to share their e-mail address, which the ASC later uses to send an electronic survey. “We have some physicians who are not owners in our facility but still choose this as their exclusive place to do surgery because they enjoy the quality outcomes and their patients are happy with the services,” Mr. Braden says.
3. Achieve 100 percent physician and staff buy-in for quality improvement initiatives. Implementing on-going quality improvement programs and initiatives not only helps meet accreditation standards but also demonstrates to physicians, staff, patients and the community that your ASC is committed to achieving excellence in quality outcomes, which is another way to market your ASC. Even though Marysville Surgical Center has won the CTQ Solutions Apex Quality Award two years in a row, Ms. Braden says not all the staff members were on board right away.
“I had a staff concern brought to me from someone who was new to our organization. The concern was that our culture is one where we invite staff to bring quality issues to the forefront and work on quality openly that way, and she was not from a culture where it was encouraged to discuss quality issues openly,” Ms. Braden says. “She was hesitant at first because she hadn’t been encouraged to work in an environment like that. Later, she was wowed at our approach to quality improvement.”
4. Participate in quality reporting. Ms. Braden says leaders from the ASC industry are currently in the process of recommending National Quality Forum quality measures that can be publicly reported to CMS. They are the same quality indicators that hospitals are expected to report. Publicly reporting on quality measures gives ASCs a way to show physicians, payors and patients how they perform compared to other healthcare facilities and organizations, which can lead to increased case volumes, better managed care contracts and an improved market presence.
“Being able to publicly report the same quality measures is important because when you prove to physicians, commercial payors and government payors that you maintain excellent outcomes, even though you’re a small healthcare entity, that is a huge marketing tool,” Ms. Braden says. “It builds great confidence with patients as well.”
Learn more about Marysville Surgical Center.
