Investing heavily in staff retention, buying under vendors’ best offerings and having tight controls over spending are three ways that this ASC is keeping up with inflation and rising costs.
Suzi Cunningham, an administrator at Advanced Ambulatory Surgery Center in Redlands, Calif., recently connected with Becker’s to share how her surgery center is reducing costs.
Note: Ms. Cunningham’s response was lightly edited for clarity and length.
Question: What strategies are you employing at your organization to keep up with rising costs?
Suzie Cunningham: Here are a few measures we are taking to reduce expenses:
No. 1: It may sound counter intuitive, but by doing our best to reduce employee turnover, we limit spending on the resources to onboard and train new staff. Therefore, we do our best to offer competitive compensation, very good benefits and flexible schedules to our staff, so they feel valued and know that we want them to be happy and enjoy working here.
No. 2: We meet with our vendors regularly to ensure we are buying under the best possible program offering. This is a ton of work and requires working closely with our GPO and our surgeons to champion the need for competitive pricing.
No. 3: We have tight controls over spending. Every single invoice crosses my desk before being paid and we do not allow for automatic payments. While this may seem like an outdated workflow, it enables us to catch things early and avoid any leakage of the valuable dollars the center has earned.
