This is Rosie Talago with the Becker's Healthcare
podcast. Today, I'm thrilled to be joined by
Eric Schnapp, chief executive officer of Resolve Pain
Solutions, to talk about some of the biggest
trends in the AIC industry.
Eric, it's a pleasure to have you on
the podcast today. Yeah. It's a pleasure to
be here. Thank you. Can you please take
a moment to introduce yourself and your work
in the industry? Sure. Thank you. Like you
said, Eric Schnapp. I'm the CEO of Resolve
Pain Solutions.
We are a managed service organization
specializing in interventional pain practices throughout the southeast.
We partner with pain practices to really help
alleviate the administrative burden that really has grown
in the practice of pain management.
And we've been at it for a while
now. We have 40 years of best practices,
and we're now helping to apply that across
other practices now. Great. Thank you so much.
So our first question surrounds the prediction that
ASC volume across the country is expected to
increase by 16%
by 2032.
With this growth, what are the most pressing
challenges to maintaining a positive patient experience?
Yeah. I mean, that brings up a really
good point.
We want to increase volume,
but,
at what cost?
It's gonna be a strain on our resources.
I think we all want volume,
but
are we going to increase capacity? Are we
going to increase the employees that we have
there?
I think what the patient experiences when they
come in is very important for their outcome.
The success of a patient depends not 100%
on the procedure, but how they feel going
into it, how they feel going out to
it, what was the interaction with the nurse
or the provider.
So we wanna ensure that we're preserving that
as much as possible.
And in some ways, we we wanna make
sure that the patient doesn't feel like a
number, even though we might have been doing
it 40 times that day or a 1000
times that year.
In some regards, we wanna take sort of
a page out of theater and have the
illusion of the first time.
It may be the 40th time for that
nurse, but it's the first time for that
patient. And ensuring that they feel that they
are unique and they're not one amongst many
goes a long way towards their outcome. Absolutely.
And when you talk about ensuring that patient
experience is a positive one and making it
seem like it's the first time,
what strategies has worked for your organization in
accomplishing that and tackling some other challenges?
Sure.
We wanna ensure that
we're not sort of just passing this,
workload
on to our employees.
When patients
interact with our ASC, they interact with the
employees that are working there. The nurses, the
check-in, the triage.
And I think we've all we work with
service industry every day. I think we've all
met people who you can tell from the
get go don't enjoy their job, and that
has a negative effect on the rest of
our experience.
If we can ensure that our employees have
a good experience, that will pass on to
the patients. So I think the very first
step is ensuring that we have good employees,
they like where they work,
they enjoy what they're doing, and they feel
valued and there's a lot of different levers
to pull there. And it's not just for
employee retention, but it absolutely translates to that
patient experience.
If the employee, if the nurse
feels like they are a part of something
bigger,
feels like, again, they are not just one
of a number, They will,
whether consciously
or subconsciously,
pass that on to the patient and have
the successful outcome from there. It's a great
point to start with the root cause with
the provider that's then passed on to the
patient experience.
So
I'd like to hear your thoughts next on
another prevalent
issue, which is the cost of care.
So how can leaders ensure their staff are
well equipped to help patients navigate the financial
aspects of their care, and how could this
benefit the patient to provider
experience?
I assume in this question we're asking about,
the clinical staff,
and how they can be more empowered with
the financial aspect. And I I struggle with
that a lot because
the
the industry has changed so much that you
you almost have to be an expert
in billing
and payers for you to even know what
a patient is going to expect to pay.
We have some software here, but it's based
on very current
information from the patient. It's based on secondary
information, co pay, etcetera.
And I find it very difficult for a
clinical,
personnel to have that discussion intelligently.
Just like we wouldn't want billing staff having
a conversation
with medical nature with patients,
it's difficult for patients to have those conversations
with non financial,
experts.
And so what we really wanna do is
do work on the front end. If we
can front load
the,
discovery of that information to be able to
give it to our clinical personnel so they
have it in front of them, and they
could say, hey. We've run an estimate already.
We know what this is going to look
like. Rather than,
no one wants to feel ignorant. No one
wants to have a patient ask them a
question that they don't know the answer to.
We don't like to feel it. The patient
doesn't like it if we don't know the
answer. So I think, importantly, if we're gonna
have clinical staff really engage in these discussions,
we need to do the work upfront and
put that information in the EMR or notes.
Ideally, though, it's making it easy for the
patient to interact with the, experts in finances,
whether that's our billing team. And that can
be through online chats, that can be through
picking up a phone. If you got billing
in house, you can have them come down
and chat with the patients in the PACU.
So I think there's a number of options,
but I think it is a tricky
question
because
we don't want to misinform the patient. I
think saying I don't know is a lot
better than guessing. If you tell a patient
it's gonna cost x and it cost y,
they're gonna be upset because it's much more
expensive,
and you're gonna have blowback from that. Right.
So transparency from the beginning, but honesty if
that's not possible,
and then providing the resources to then the
experts that can provide that information moving forward.
That's great.
Lastly, are there any additional challenges, innovations,
or anything else we didn't talk about that
is on the top of your mind in
the industry?
Yeah. I I think we can all agree
the industry is not only changing faster than
ever before, but, at a pace that is
also increasing
month over month, year over year. And just
keeping up with it is hard. What I
wanna make sure we don't do is
all
the technology and AI is all very sexy.
But like I said, the interaction with the
patient leads to a direct impact on the
outcome. We could bring down to 0 if
we really wanted the amount of interaction with
a patient. You can ask them all the
questions upfront before they even come in.
But I think we wanna ensure that we're
keeping that interaction and we're making it of
a of a sufficient quality
rather than just ask and you're asking pain
scores, where it hurts, etcetera,
ensuring that the interaction you're having is is,
one that matters to the patient,
and they're going to help feel like they,
again, are unique in
your day. So I think doing what we
can to minimize
the non quality interactions,
if we can capture data upfront, that allows
more time for a triage or a nurse
to have better,
and and more quality of communication with the
patient.
Yeah. Kind of bring the human aspect back
to the forefront of care. That's absolutely right.
I mean, we're being asked
by any number of actors or organizations to
do more with what we have,
and, we'd be silly if we didn't change
with the times, but we wanna make sure
we're, we're preserving the part that matters, which
is that patient experience.
That's great. Well, thank you so much for
joining us today and for speaking at Becker's
30th annual ASC conference.
It's a pleasure, and we look forward to
connecting soon. Thank you so much for having