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This is Gracelyn Keller with the Becker's Healthcare
Podcast, and we are live at the business
and operations of ASCs.
I'm joined right now by Jeffrey Flynn, who
is the administrator and COO of Gramercy Surgical
Center. So thanks so much for joining me
today. Would love to have you start off
by taking a moment to introduce yourself a
little bit further.
Sure. I'm Jeff Flynn. I'm the administrator and
chief operating officer of Gramercy Surgery Center, and
I'm also the president of the New York
State Association of Ambulatory Surgery Centers,
where we have a 175
surgery centers in New York, but a 112
are are members. Mhmm.
Wonderful. Well, thank you for being here. And
let's start our conversation today talking about ASC
volume. So across the country, this is expected
to increase by 16%
by the year 2032.
With this growth, what are the most pressing
challenges to maintaining a positive patient experience? I
think with that, it's gonna be especially as
we're facing it in New York, it's gonna
be actually access of care.
It's that we have enough centers and building
more centers.
But also,
where it's we have to be mindful of
cost of cases and where we're actually directing
the specific cases to. Can we afford to
do the cases we're doing? And what would
be our strategy to change the method of
what cases we can change
to afford to be able to do the
cases?
And going off of that, what strategies have
worked for your organization as you're tackling these
challenges? And what's a recommendation you have for
health care leaders to stay ahead?
We've been hearing it, and it's resonated several
times at this conference, is value based care.
That really is coming to full fruition.
We're seeing it in New York, specifically with
the unions.
The largest union in New York has 420,000
covered lives.
That union is moving towards a thing because
they're self funded. They're not just going via
their TPA.
They're actually contracting directly with centers. They're actually
doing bundled payments
just to get cases out of the hospital
to just curb the, you know, unsustainable
rising cost of health care across the board.
And I think people have heard in the
past that value health. I think the pandemic
kind of stalled it a little bit.
And I think people some often have their
head in the sand that they're not realizing
it is coming about because the employers are
actually really demanding it. And it comes down
to also that,
70% of the country currently is under a
self funded plan. They just don't know it.
They have a commercial insurance card. They assume
that it just works the way it does
across the board. But those the people who
represent that 70%
on the employer side are demanding the change
of the cost.
And shifting gears slightly to the financial side
of things. How can leaders ensure their staff
are well equipped to help patients navigate financial
aspects of care? And how does this benefit
patient provider relationships?
I think the most important thing is to
really look at what the patient
when you're focusing on the patient care is
full transparency and giving the patients full communication.
Several states have laws in place now that
there has to be a time frame where
the patient actually gets delivered
what their patient responsibility
is. But also in the
same sense of looking at the case overall,
are there hardship situations?
All of us,
to a certain extent do do certain aspects
of charity care, but specifically maintaining a balance
within the center so that we're giving the
doctor a positive experience.
You don't want to say to a doctor,
we can take 10 of your cases, but
the 11th case we can't take because
we're not in that insurance or it's going
to be a loss to it. You got
to look at things from a business standpoint
of let's look at the whole day
and focus on that just to improve
not only the
doctor's relationship with the patient, but the patient's
relationship overall with the center and the overall
health care experience.
Absolutely.
And as we wrap our conversation up, is
there anything else you'd like to share on
the podcast today?
Yeah. One of the the things I'd like
to share, and of course, it's biased because
I am a state president,
is that it's really important to get out
of your silos and see what's going on.
So I really encourage everyone to join their
state associations
and specifically
find out what they're not hearing day in
and day out. Because we all work these
12 hour days and don't really get out
of it unless you're coming to conferences like
this and really see what's available, what's in
the future.
And I think the state associations also help
the smaller centers do that too. So I
would encourage them just from the lifeline. We
do a biweekly
phone call for membership just of what's new,
what's out there from a legislative standpoint to
a technology standpoint. And I think a number
of other states do that too. California and
Texas are both excellent at at that also.
And I really think that that's really important
to just get out of the silos so
you understand what's coming down the pipe for
the future.
Wonderful. Well, thank you for taking the time
to be here today and joining me on
the Becker's Health Care podcast. Again, we are
live at the business and operations of ASCs.