1. Make your staff members supply experts. Tammy Burnett, administrator of The Plastic Surgical Center in Flowood, Miss., says her center keeps supply costs down by incentivizing staff members with a shared year-end bonus. Every staff member, regardless of stature or tenure, shares equally in a bonus based on the center’s year-end profit, meaning that staff members can enjoy the financial results of their hard work. To make sure her staff can make smart decisions about supply purchasing, Ms. Burnett holds regular contests where staff members have to guess how much a supply is worth. Whoever gets the closest wins a prize, and eventually the staff members learn which supplies are good values.
An in-depth knowledge of supplies benefits Cypress Surgery Center when staff members have to make decisions about purchasing. “They’re not going to skimp on quality, but they’re not going to let the rep du jour feed them supplies [we don’t need],” Ms. Burnett says.
From: 3 Ways to Cut ASC Costs Through Supply Management
2. Used credit card to accumulate awards. Administrator Linda Phillips, RN, of Southgate (Mich.) Surgery Center, says the center has started using a credit card to pay for supply orders because the center is able to accumulate points in exchange for rewards each time they use the credit card.
“We earn those points through the bank to get thing such as iPods and docking stations, for our physicians and staff because they like listening to music, and a mini-fridge,” Ms. Phillips says. “By paying our supply bills by credit card, we are able to save money by buying things through these points. We immediately pay off the credit card with our checking account because you don’t want to fall into the trap of paying interest. We really try hard to be creative in this economy.”
From: 3 Best Practices for Cutting ASC Supply Costs: Southgate Surgery Center
3. Create a bonus pool to encourage a team effort. Rosemary Lambie, RN, administrator of the SurgiCenter of Baltimore in Owings Mills, Md., says each quarter the center pays employees bonuses from an available pool of $9,000. Distributions are weighted depending on four factors: 35 percent for salaries wages and benefits if they remain below 34.8 percent of net revenue; 15 percent for supplies if they are held equal to 18 percent or less of net revenue; 25 percent for repairs and maintenance if the cost is $6,650 or less per month; and 25 percent if collections are 98 percent of the average net revenue for the previous two months, which allows for bad debt of 2 percent.
From: 5 Points on Paying Bonuses to Surgery Center Employees
4. Incent your technicians. For an ASC to establish a reprocessing program, it first needs to partner with a reprocessor. The reprocessor then supplies the ASC with a designated bin for reprocessable devices and instructions for preparing devices to be placed in the bin, which may include a simple decontamination of the devices. Then the ASC either mails the devices to the reprocessor or the reprocessor may retrieve the bin.
“Quite often it’s as simple as educating staff on which devices need to go in the reprocessing bin — building the habit of throwing a device in the reprocessing bin rather than throwing it in red bag waste,” says Mr. McDade. “Some facilities actually create incentive programs for their techs to reprocess in order to maximize the savings.”
