While independent physician groups have been busy expanding into the ASC space in recent years, operational gaps have emerged and gone largely unaddressed.
According to Pelto Health Partners’ fractional CEO, Rachel Uzlik, independent ASCs often leave savings and operational efficiencies on the table, particularly in three areas: supply spending, implant costs and capital procurement.
Ms. Uzlik joined Becker’s to discuss the gaps Pelto has identified among independent surgery centers and how those opportunities helped shape the physician-owned management services organization’s newly launched ASC platform initiative.
Editor’s note: This interview was edited lightly for clarity and length.
Question: Can you elaborate on the gap that you saw among independent practices that spurred you to launch the ASC platform?
Rachel Uzlik: We found that many of our independent physicians have ancillary capability through ASC engagement, and what we continue to identify is that there is still a delta in opportunity for savings on the surgery center side. Orthopedics specifically is playing a bigger part than ever in the ASC space. For many, ASCs grew so quickly that there’s been a wash, rinse and repeat type of growth methodology over the past few years. We’ve been really intentional in slowing down and seeing where we can return value to the patient-provider relationship, not just on the practice side, but on the surgery center side.
Spaces like the supply spend and implant spend space have been a huge win for our members in the surgical space. The employee benefit side has been a bit of a gap because many of the centers, especially the physician-owned centers, usually have smaller teams. It’s harder to frame benefits around those smaller teams and make it cost-effective. And so we found we’ve been able to translate that opportunity to the surgery center side as well.
And then also the capital equipment and procurement side. There’s an incredible opportunity to be able to leverage the scale and breadth that we’ve been able to find through our Pelto network that we’re recognizing translates to the ASC side as well.
Those are the core three gaps that we found translated very easily between practice and surgical center, and we felt like we shouldn’t be holding on to that knowledge. Instead, we should be able to bring it to market and translate it because so many of our independent physicians have diversified their interest in surgery centers.
Q: You mentioned two member practices with the program delivering more than $1.2 million in annual savings. Can you say more about where those savings are coming from?
RU: This was kind of our proof point that what we’re doing translates beyond the medical group office or the medical office group setting. Most of those savings are between capital equipment and the supply chain side. It’s a huge spend. They were either trying to do that management on their own, or they had a partner that just wasn’t accelerating the savings for them. Those two use cases were pretty clear proof that there’s an opportunity here. We can’t sit on it anymore. We have to be able to translate to the market of other independents that there are places in which you can get additional value in how your ASC performs.
And many ASCs are performing very, very well. We’re identifying there’s still even some opportunity on the table without a significant lift.
