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forward slash beckerspodcast.
This is Gracelyn Keller with the Becker's Healthcare
Podcast, and we're recording live at the thirty
first annual business and operations of ASCs.
I'm currently joined by Tara Goodyoung, who is
the CEO at PDI Surgery Center. So thanks
for being here. I'll have you kick us
off by sharing a little bit more about
yourself and your work in the ASC space.
Thanks for having me. Really appreciate it. Becker's
is one of my favorite conferences to attend.
A little about myself. So forty two years
in health care in the last twenty in
leadership,
have run different ambulatory
surgery center practices
with
maxillofacial
oral surgery,
plastics,
and now currently
in pediatrics for pediatric dental oral reconstruction.
Wonderful.
Well, let's start our conversation with the ASC
market
Because in The US, this is projected to
reach $60,800,000,000
by 2030 and continues to experience strong year
over year growth. So from your perspective, what
are the most significant trends in market forces
driving this expansion, and how should ASC leaders
be preparing today?
One of the biggest influences
I see in our ASC space
and growth is going to be CMS's
continued
expansion of outpatient
procedures
being moved from hospital setting to the ASC
setting. Now with that, there's gonna be the
expectation
of downward pressure on pricing.
Problem with that that we'll need to be
able to be prepared for is gonna be
doing a lot of payer negotiations
and knowing what your margins are and what
your market is. Just because the shiny new
thing for you to possibly be able to
do in the ASC
doesn't necessarily mean that it'll be profitable.
If it's already oversaturated
in
a shouldering market to you, you may not
have room for market share, and it may
quickly be a race to the bottom on
price
rather than pivoting to take a look at
where you can deliver the best value
customer service for your reputation.
Absolutely.
And from AI and robotic surgeries to advanced
EHR systems,
technology remains both a make or break factor
and a critical driver of ASC operations at
scale. So how do you see deeper tech
integration shaping the way ASCs deliver care and
manage their business over the next few years?
I think you can really start to leverage
AI
to do many of the menial and tedious
repetitive
tasks,
whether it's helping with managing
phone call handling still in a very humanistic
sense.
I think you'll have less turnover of staff
if you have staff that feel like they're
doing meaningful work, if AI can do the
basic level
of receiving and triage of calls than to
the human that really needs to handle it.
As well, you can load in a lot
of your data and have it aggregated
rather than spending all of this time putting
it into spreadsheets
to drill down your own data,
make your own pivot tables
that's very time consuming.
The best thing about what that can bring
to the table
is AI is really being directed now to
integrate with your EHR,
which then is a lot less click time
for your staff and for your doctors, which
has been one of the biggest complaints since
EMRs
came out.
So if you can alleviate
some of those bureaucratic
frustrations,
have people feel like they're doing what they
want to do, and it makes a difference.
You're gonna have better satisfaction
as well. It's gonna free them up to
have more of that face to face patient
time, which is where your value of customer
service and your return
patient is going to come from. Because whether
it's the employer, the insurance,
or the referring provider,
if that patient has a good experience,
you're gonna get more referrals versus if they
express that they had a poor or impersonalized
service. There's plenty of other ASCs to choose.
Yes. Absolutely.
And with 60% of health systems considering ASC
joint ventures, and many ASCs are already partnering
with systems in their communities,
What opportunities do you see for collaboration, whether
with providers or vendors, to strengthen patient care
and operational efficiency?
Collaborating with your vendors is a really great
way to know what's out there in the
market.
They'll hear from others, and they'll have inside
information,
not the secret information,
but you'll have a bigger look on a
SWOT wider outside your surrounding market
of maybe who's overwhelmed with services they can't
deliver, there's a backup,
or
where a market's already saturated
and you may not want to go into
because, again, we're looking at the race to
the bottom then on price.
Your vendors also can collaborate with you to
deliver procurement platforms so you can really see
your spend,
compare your different supply pricing,
have great and sustainable
supply chain,
which we've all discovered during COVID and afterwards
that just in time ordering is no longer
just in time, and you always really need
to have a backup vendor
for your mission critical items. And your vendors
can help you
with negotiating rate
and having platforms that give you transparency
to see what other vendors are doing, and
you can get those vendors to work together
to give you better pricing and sustainable
supply.
And is there anything else that we didn't
touch on or any final thoughts you'd like
to share as we wrap up the conversation?
I think it's really important for us to
take a look at, as I mentioned before,
not just chasing the shiny new thing. Sometimes
it's not always best to be first
when a lot of new regulations are rolled
out,
new procedures are released to outpatient.
It still can be a gray area of
how it's billed, how it's gonna be reimbursed,
how it'll be handled, what's the pre authorization
pain points going to be, Because you need
to be prepared for all of that, and
how will you staff up for
the new procedures
or the new equipment that needs to be
brought on for that and be able to
take a look at what are your costs
going to be
in that front loaded time wherein you are
training,
investing
to be able to finally execute with excellence.
Absolutely. Well, Tara, thanks so much for joining
me today on the Becker's Healthcare Podcast. Again,
we're recording live at the thirty first annual
business and operations of ASCs.
Thank you for having me.