Patrick Garman, executive administrator at Monongahela, Pa.-based Spartan Health Surgicenter, discusses the key staffing challenges and opportunities at his center.
Question: What has been your biggest staffing challenge and how do you overcome it?
Patrick Garman: Spartan's biggest staffing challenge has been finding the qualified clinical staff member who is willing to be compensated what a typical ASC can pay versus what that same clinician will be compensated for comparable work at a hospital. Recruiting and retaining solid part-time/per diem nurses and operating room techs, weaving them into the schedule so that it benefits the ASC is a challenge. These part-time/PRN clinicians enable an ASC to reap considerable profits due to flexibility, mobility and expense savings.
Q: What is your philosophy on building and maintaining a positive culture at the ASC?
PG: By reminding the staff (especially the clinicians) that it is a privilege to be a licensed provider in healthcare, entrusted with patient care and affecting a positive outcome. They need to know that it is a unique industry, unlike any other. They are special for just signing up and going through the educational process, getting licensed, certified, etcetera. They will be remembered by the patient encounter each and every time.
I tell all my staff to strive to make sure that every subsequent year is better than the one before. And that when they are the subject of a patient or surgeon's praise, to proudly embrace that comment (due to a positive outcome) and strive to make it that way 100 percent of the time.
Q: What tips do you have for new administrators managing an ASC team for the first time?
PG: This depends on what the new administrator is walking into: is the job a start-up operation or a turnaround? It almost requires different skill sets.
The start-up is timeline-oriented, strategic thinking-[and] budget/business plan-focused, organized by-the-book type of skillset. This newly hired administrator has deadlines, regulatory and licensing concerns, construction and completion goals, capital purchasing, assembling a new staff and recruitment of new surgeons. This individual must be laser-focused, on point and very well organized.
The turnaround position is much more volatile. He/she is walking into a failed facility that could be marked for sale (change of ownership) or closure. Serious changes have to be made, the status quo must be challenged, in many cases involuntary departures are in order and a new team must be assembled (most important are a DON and business office manager). This new administrator better be prepared to commit to long hours, tactical decisions on a daily basis and surrounding himself/herself with a tough, loyal and committed team of staff members and surgeons. This new team must all understand what is at stake (saving the ASC) and demonstrate an unwavering dedication to the successful turnaround.
Q: How have you challenged your team to grow in 2019?
PG: Simple: since my staff are all seasoned professionals and recipients of patient satisfaction scores in the 98.5 to 100 percent range, I tell them (and it's measured in their annual performance evaluations) to make every year better than the one before.
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