Mr. Bockelman started his pursuit with the youngest of the three physicians, a pediatric ophthalmologist surgeon who had just come out of training. Once Mr. Bockelman had demonstrated the surgery center’s value and quality outcomes, the surgeon quickly agreed to bring cases to the facility — but told Mr. Bockelman that his two colleagues would not follow suit. “The first thing he said was, ‘I’ll be the only one that will come’,” Mr. Bockelman says. “I said, ‘Well, that’s nice, and we sure look forward to having you, but that just won’t do.'”
Over the next few weeks, Mr. Bockelman had the opportunity to get to know his new surgeon — and show him the benefits of life at Foundation Surgery Center of Oklahoma. “I have the luxury of managing a very financially viable operation,” he says. “I’m a CPA by vocation and I’ve been in healthcare operations for 20 years, and I was able to utilize my existing partnership with physicians in the ophthalmology field who are a big referral source to the pediatric ophthalmologists. Basically I facilitated more referrals to the pediatric ophthalmologists.”
A sports lover by nature, Mr. Bockelman invited his new physician and the second “unattainable” surgeon to an NBA basketball game to get to know them better. Each surgeon paid for his own ticket to avoid legal issues surrounding physician referrals. While the Oklahoma City Thunder beat the L.A. Lakers, Mr. Bockelman asked the second surgeon if he would be interested in taking a tour of Foundation Surgery Center of Oklahoma. He didn’t pressure the physician; it wasn’t his style. “One of the things that bothers me in our industry is when sales people call you 20 times a month,” he says. “I’ll do business with you, but you’ve got to have a sense of decorum. I just asked [the physician], ‘Would you like to take a tour of the facility?'” He said yes, and Mr. Bockelman left it at that.
Two days later, as Mr. Bockelman was heading to lunch, the second surgeon called him. “He said, ‘I’m bringing my whole staff, and we’re all coming over to tour your facility,'” he says. The tour went well — Mr. Bockelman showed off the facility’s large ORs and demonstrated the center’s ability to handle 2,000 cataract surgeries a year. He asked the surgeon if he would like a credentialing packet, and the packet was back in his hands, completed, within 24 hours. Three weeks later, the surgeon started cases at the center, and a few months after that, he decided to invest.
“Through all of this, I was told I still couldn’t get [the third surgeon] to come and be a partner,” Mr. Bockelman says. The most unattainable of the three surgeons was much sought-after by other surgery centers in the community. “He was what you would call Moby Dick — the great white whale that Ahab went after,” Mr. Bockelman says. “Everybody had tried to get him.” While the physician had some ownership in another local surgery center, the center did not take Medicare and Medicaid — a significant advantage for Mr. Bockelman considering the high Medicaid population in the Oklahoma City community.
He met with the third surgeon regularly, trying to ease the physician’s discomfort about bringing cases to the ASC. “We have a third-party contract with our anesthesia providers, and they were the same anesthesiologists as at the hospital [where the surgeon worked],” he says. “It wasn’t going to be reinventing the wheel when he came in. You don’t mess with pediatrics — any time they go under, it’s an investment in their future, so you’ve got to be at the top of your game.” It didn’t hurt that Mr. Bockelman is, by nature, is a personable man. “Darn it, [he] just liked me,” he says. Once he demonstrated the low-cost, quality care the ASC could provide, the third surgeon agreed to join up, investing in the ASC and bringing cases almost at once.
“At the end of the day, he saw my level of commitment,” Mr. Bockelman says. “We talk care of the patients first. We have to be the low-cost provider, but we still have to do it better than everybody else.”
Read more on physician recruitment:
–6 Proven Strategies for Physician Recruitment
–5 Ways to Retain Non-Owner ASC Surgeons in an Oversaturated Market
