Hello. This is Francesca Matthews with the Becker's
ASC review podcast.
I'm thrilled to be joined today by Thomas
Hutchinson,
administrator of the Surgery Center of Central Florida.
Thank you so much for being here today.
Yeah. Thanks for having me.
Absolutely.
To start us off here, could you please
introduce yourself and tell us a little bit
about your background?
Yeah. So my name is Tom Hutchinson.
I work at Surgery Center of Central Florida
here in Ocala, Florida.
I've been here for almost four years. I've
been with the company,
about the same time frame.
I actually came from,
Open Heart, CVOR,
in the hospital, did a, a short stint
in the cath lab,
and then came over to the cardiology practice.
I was the radiology manager for a little
while,
and then the director of the ASC left,
and I took over from there.
Right. Excellent. Excited to to get to the
discussion today.
To kinda start broadly, what are the top
three trends that you're following in health care
and ASCs today?
Well,
I mean, we're, we're primarily a cardiology,
ASC. So one of the big trends that
everybody in cardiology or has anything to do
with cardiology is looking at for ASCs is,
EP ablations.
That's that's probably our number one,
topic right now
in our industry.
I think one of the other kinda nerve
wracking ones is the the government shutdown and
how that might affect us,
waiting for the new, Medicare rules to come
out.
And then third, I think a lot of
people, are are struggling with the the trend
of staffing,
trying to compete with hospitals and and, you
know, get good staff in the doors and
keep good staff.
Mhmm. And that that keeping good staff component,
I know, is is really crucial there.
And then, yeah, also, you know, we're we're
also waiting to see what else CMS says
over here at Becker's,
since a few of those rules haven't been
released yet. But what are you most excited
about right now in health care, ASCs, cardiology,
all of it?
BEP ablations. That's a big one. We've been
pushing for that for a while. We,
we're trying to contract with private payers, and
our practice has just kinda struggled with it.
I know there are some other ones that,
that have had a little more success on
that side of it.
I know, like, in Arizona, there's a couple
places that got, like, the hospital without walls
during COVID, and they were able to hold
on to it. And and,
Alaska has kind of been able to do
it, I think, just more so because of
their
ruralness,
you would say.
But,
that's at least that's the impression I get.
But, yeah, so with Medicare being able to
allow us to do those ablations in the
in the outpatient setting, I think that's a
huge advantage to our cardiology patients and,
and it will take some of the workload
off the hospital a little bit.
Yeah. Definitely. I've definitely heard similar things from
other, like, outpatient cardiology leaders that that we
talk to every every day over here at
Becker's.
So, yeah, definitely just, like, echo that sentiment.
How are you thinking about growth over the
next twelve months?
Well,
we've actually added a couple physicians to our
practice,
here in the ASC, and we're also looking
at adding maybe a couple locums.
We're looking at, you know, bringing some vascular
surgery into our ASC, so that'll be something
new for us.
We are
looking at a couple
couple procedures that require vascular surgeons. We don't
have any right now, so we'll have to
we're looking at locums for that.
And then, of course, with the EP stuff,
you know, we wanna do as much business
as we can in that space,
so we're looking at possibly bringing on locums
EP also.
Physical growth, we're actually
our ASC is we have three operating rooms,
and we only have eight pre and post
op bays. And, we're we're looking to add
on to our pre and post op. So
our our growth there,
physically, we need to grow heart building, and
we're gonna add on another 10 patient bays
for pre and post op.
Awesome. That's exciting. I you kinda have touched
on this already, but just wanted to follow-up
a little bit here just because you're in
a pretty unique position given,
you know, the newness of some of these
procedures in the outpatient setting and being in
a kind of position of growth. I'm curious
if you were talking to, which, you know,
we kind of are, to another cardiology ASC
leader who's or even just an ASC leader
looking to maybe add some of these services.
What would you say is, like, the most
important thing
to kinda look at first before adding some
of these procedures and services?
I mean, I think your pro form a
on, you know, device cost,
what what the vendors are gonna charge you
for, you know, capital equipment, the disposables, all
that stuff. I mean, you got the I
think the biggest thing all of us are
facing right now, even us, we kinda took
a leap of faith, and and we're prepared
for it for January 1, but we still
don't have any hard numbers what Medicare is
gonna reimburse us on these EP ablations.
So to add this whole service line,
we're
we're going off of projections.
But I think the biggest thing is to
know
where you stand, what what your capital costs
are gonna be, your disposable costs, your staff
costs, your fixed costs,
and and just do a good in-depth pro
form a.
So you have the
you know
you you only have one variable, the reimbursement
right now.
Mhmm. Mhmm. That makes sense for sure.
Yeah. I don't have anything else for you
today, actually, Thomas. So thank you so much
for joining us.
Yeah. Thank you. Glad to be here. Yeah.
Yeah. It's been a pleasure speaking with you,
and I look forward to connecting with you
again in the future.
Yep. I look forward to it. Thank you.
Yep. Thank you. Have a good rest of
your day. Alright. You too.