Q: What is the Arizona market like for surgery centers?
Dr. David Ott: The market for ASCs started in Arizona almost 30 years ago. The first ASC ever was actually started in Phoenix, so the market is very established here. There are several orthopedic-specific ASCs in our area that we compete with.
Q: What does the center do to keep itself competitive?
DO: What we did was identify a solid group of surgeons. The competition is high for quality surgeons, and we make sure we have the top orthopedic surgeons here. One of the biggest and most unexpected benefits of working at our center is that we have the orthopedic surgeons share information amongst their colleagues. We’re essentially competitors in private practice — one private practice against another competing for patients. Here, I can talk to someone who’s essentially my competition and ask him how to do better with this procedure or that. Everyone gets better that way.
We also brought on an established administrator and hired nursing staff and scrub technician staff, which ultimately made a very efficient center that was patient-friendly. Now, the efficiency of the center is the best it’s ever been. The room turnover, which is measured from the time patient leaves the waiting room to see a physician to the time he or she comes back, is very quick. It’s as low as seven minutes, and that’s very key. That’s probably the most important sales point that physicians deal with. That comes from a very tightly established team approach.
We also don’t have a lot of administrative employees. I have an administrator, OR manager, post-op and pre-op manager and a business manager. All those people actually do work. I’ve seen the OR manager and business manager mop the floor many times. The administrator wears scrubs and goes into the OR or works on room turnover. She’s a worker bee just like everyone else. That’s common for a 3-4 OR ASC, but we have 6 ORs plus one pain room. Centers of our size frequently have an administrator, assistant administrator and other support staff that don’t do clinical work. Everyone at the facility does clinical work, except the business office.
Q: How do you retain such a strong staff?
DO: We have a metric for how bonuses are distributed to the staff every quarter. By taking care of our staff, we have zero staff turnover. The physicians agree to give the administrator a lump sum each quarter, which is a percentage of our profit, and the administrator looks at certain things, such as who’s willing to take an extra shift and who is willing to go beyond the call of duty. I have staff that started here on day one when we opened eight years ago, and they’re still with us.
