Are your patients looking for an easy way
to pay for health care? Want to level
up the way you do business? Then the
CareCredit Health and Wellness card just might be
the answer.
For over 30 years, CareCredit, a Synchrony solution,
has been providing patients with a modern, flexible
way to pay for their health and wellness
expenses.
CareCredit seamlessly integrates with your business, helping minimize
account receivable, all while your patients enjoy budget
friendly financing options.
To learn more about how CareCredit works for
you and your patients,
visit carecredit.comforward/beccarspodcast.
This is Gracelyn Keller with the Becker's Healthcare
podcast, and we are live at the business
and operations of ASCs.
I am currently joined by doctor Ken Rich,
who is the president at Raleigh Neurosurgery Clinic.
So, doctor Rich, thanks so much for joining
me today. Would love to have you start
off by introducing yourself and telling us a
little bit more about your role in the
industry.
Thank you for inviting me. My name is
Ken Rich, r I c h, and I
am the president of Raleigh Neurosurgical
Clinic in North Carolina.
I'm also the
medical director at RASC and the chairman of
the board there.
And I've been practicing neurosurgery
for 40 years since my residency. So more
and more my role is administrative.
And while I still
get in the operating room to assist my
younger partners,
They to be honest, they have better eyes
and hands than I do now.
Well, thank you for being here this morning.
We'd love to start our conversation here talking
about ASC volume. So across the country, this
is expected to increase
by 16%
by the year 2032.
With this growth, what is the most pressing
challenge to maintaining a positive patient experience?
Well, I think 2 things come to mind
on that. Of course, we all love growth
and 16%
growth per year sounds really good.
But hiring staff to
take care of that growth is difficult in
today's day and age.
Staff being
the pre and post op nurses, the front
office,
the OR techs and the OR nurses and
anesthesia.
That's very challenging
today.
But I think an even more important thing
is to us, we have a very small
ASC.
It's only
got 2 operating rooms that can run simultaneously.
And what that does, it creates an ambiance
in pre op and post op of a
quiet,
calm,
very nice
setting
for the patients and their families. And that's
one of the things we hear
most
when patients give us feedback is how pleasant
it was. When we go to our level
1 trauma center,
it's
got 25 people getting ready for surgery at
the same time and it's like herding cattle
and they get the job done. But I
don't think it's anywhere near as pleasant an
experience. And as we grow,
we have to be very careful to maintain
that because I think that's
one of the most
awesome things about doing this in a small
ambulatory surgery center.
Absolutely.
And going off of that, what strategies have
worked for your organization to tackle some of
these challenges? And what's one recommendation you have
for health care leaders to stay ahead?
Well, we we have done things like make
sure our staff
is really well taken care of. And that
doesn't just mean paychecks. That means
our small surgery center, we only have ten
owners.
So the owners all get to know the
staff quite well. We know them. We know
their families.
We know what they're doing on vacation.
And I think that creates a very nice
rapport between
the surgeons
and the staff and gets them very happy.
And a very interesting
book to read is a book called Patients
Come Second.
It's by Paul
Sprigelman
and Britt Barrett.
And we all like to put our patients
first.
But this takes a little different philosophy. It
says,
no, put your staff first.
If they're
happy,
they will convey that to the patients, and
you'll have both a happy staff and happy
patients. It's a short book. It's a good
read, and I would recommend that.
Wonderful. Well, thank you for that recommendation.
And shifting gears just a little bit to
the financial side, how can leaders ensure their
staff are well equipped to help patients navigate
the financial aspect of care? And how does
this benefit patient provider relationships?
Well, if the patient gets surprises,
you're not going to have very happy patients.
It may be after the fact, you may
have done the surgery.
But that word-of-mouth
advertising that's so important
to growing your practice and growing your surgery
center is
it's going to be affected negatively.
So what we try to do is before
the surgery,
we have a person who can present to
the patients
and their family
the economic pros and cons of doing things
in the surgery center. Yes, upfront, you're going
to have more costs, but we can help
you with that. We can help you
get a loan that'll cover that that you
can pay back slowly.
But overall, you're going to save a lot
of money doing things in the surgery center.
So we try to educate them
not just about the pros of a surgery
center, but also here's what to expect. We
want to get
our co pays up front, and
we'll help you with that.
And as we wrap our conversation here, is
there any parting words you'd like to share
on the podcast?
Well, I I think ASCs
are certainly
here to stay.
We our ASC is totally owned by our
10 partners.
And I think that's important to stay away
from
hospitals taking over 51%
of your ASC so they can
use their
insurance contracts and so forth. Yes, it's more
money.
But now you have a boss, they own
51%
of your company.
And it makes it much harder
with them in charge
to do the kind of things you need
to do to keep your staff happy
and to be flexible.
Big institutions
aren't flexible.
Absolutely. Well, doctor Rich, thanks so much for
joining me today on the Becker's Healthcare podcast.
Again, we are live at the business and
operations of ASCs.