Hi, everyone. This is Erica Spicer Mason with
Becker's Healthcare. Thank you so much for tuning
into the Becker's Healthcare podcast series.
Joining me on today's episode is Jimmy Discani,
the senior director of Healthcare Administrator
Relations at Arthrex.
He'll talk to us about growth and innovation
in the ambulatory
surgery space.
Jimmy, thanks so much for joining us today,
and welcome.
Hi, Erica.
I'm delighted to meet with you today and
discuss several important topics. But first, let me
give you some background experience.
I really come from the clinical and operational
realms. I began my career as a critical
care nurse for the Department of Veterans Affairs
in the early 19 nineties,
then served in various leadership roles for 2
publicly traded health systems and a physician owned
hospital.
So prior to joining Arthrex, I was a
customer.
I served as a hospital CNO, then eventually
as a chief executive officer.
And in my current role with Arthrex, I
work with surgeons
as well as hospital health system and ASC
leaders, and, of course, ASC management company leaders.
What I do most of the time is
provide education, support,
and help facilitate strategic alignment between all of
us since my background is really from the
hospital and ASC markets.
As many of our listeners may know,
Arthrex is a global leader
in new product development, research,
and medical education orthopedics.
We're also one of the top 5 orthopedic
companies in the world,
and we've also become a leader in multispecialty
imaging
and integration,
orthobiologics,
and most recently in endoscopic spine, which we'll
talk more about,
later in today's show, Erica.
So we are rapidly evolving into new specialty
areas as more surgeons and administrators
seek options to help them advance care.
It's also important for our listeners to know
that we are a private company
with our global headquarters located in Naples, Florida,
and that we have manufacturing
and logistics facilities in Florida,
South Carolina, and California.
Jimmy, thank you so much for sharing a
bit more about your background. It's great to
hear that you're bringing to Arthrex
all of this experience in health care starting
as a critical care nurse all the way
up to executive leadership.
Sounds like you've got a lot of great
expertise to bring to our podcast today. So,
again, excited to have you here. And I
wanted to make sure that we started our
conversation off just by kind of giving listeners
a sense of
how the ambulatory surgery space is really booming.
And while growth
is certainly exciting, of course, there comes challenges
as well. So I was wondering if you
could just touch on priorities and key concerns
that you're hearing from both administrators and surgeon
owners.
Yeah. Sure. Thanks, Erica.
It's really an exciting space. And, of course,
it's challenging, as you know, with never ending
payment methodology changes,
increases in regulatory requirements,
complex pair dynamics,
of course, labor challenges and other market forces.
So for today's purposes, I thought I'd really
just discuss maybe the top five priorities that
we work through every day with customers.
And these aren't any particular order, but I
thought I'd start with really the patient experience
being at the top of the list
and, how to deliver quality care
for surgeons and administrators in those facilities. So
to add value in this area, we developed
various patient education engagement tools at Arthrex.
For example, we launched several new public websites
that include education for the healthcare consumer.
The first one's orthopedia.com,
and there's a patient tab,
a handful of other sites, anklesprain.com,
shoulderreplacement.com,
ecltear.com,
bunyapain.com,
jointpreservation.com,
and finally, the nano experience.com,
which highlights exciting new minimally invasive
surgery using a nanoscope.
So there's new technology. So our listeners can
simply visit arthrex.com
to learn more about those
products, those technologies, those educational resources, or they
can simply contact their local representatives. But in
addition to the patient education,
we've also developed digital engagement tools. So again,
keeping the patient at the center
of everyone's strategy here.
So for example, our synergy imaging and integration
platform has a tablet based program
that allows surgeons to record personalized video messages,
include any relevant content and instructions.
They can do that via secure messaging or
it can be integrated into the EHR.
Another example is we offer preoperative education
through our virtual implant positioning and planning platform.
That's for shoulder arthroplasty and endoscopic spine procedures.
So we feel that providing patients with rich
dynamic content and multichannel communication is really an
important aspect of their experience.
And so we developed these tools and resource
to help support those efforts.
The second area of focus
that administrators and surgeons
have brought forward to us is
they're dealing with inflationary pressures.
This has affected all of us, and as
you know, they are trying to balance rising
costs, maintain margins, and deliver high quality care
at the same time. So in this current
environment,
they're essentially competing for everyone and everything.
If we think about it, they're competing for
the healthcare consumer, which becomes the patient.
They're competing for physicians, nurses,
surgical techs, anesthesia,
perhaps resources are competing against other priorities.
So that said, they're turning to us to
help understand what competitive advantages
can a partnership with us provide
through access to innovation,
innovative products, minimally invasive techniques, advanced technologies, things
like that. And so
advancing care and keeping the patient at the
center of the equation
really requires collaboration and and an open mind.
I would say a third priority has been
managing cost
while still being able to invest in growth.
So the administrators and and surgeon owners
realize they cannot save their way to profitability.
They know that they always need to manage
costs,
but at some point,
they must grow the business while providing quality
care at the same time. So this is
tricky.
And this is where we can help
with service line growth and expansion ideas.
We're teaching them how to increase capacity and
utilization
of their operating rooms and procedure rooms,
and also to reduce clinical variation
by simply streamlining and simplifying
different procedures and technologies.
I would say a 4th priority has really
been around service and support.
The administrators and surgeon owners really have placed
increased value
on ensuring that their surgeons and surgical teams
are supported,
that their equipment functions
optimally.
We all know that healthcare is complex and
situations
in the operating room can change instantly.
That said, we really take incredible pride in
the amount of medical education skills training that
we provide both locally and at our corporate
headquarters.
So, Erica, I'd like to encourage our listeners
to work closely with our local representatives,
establish a plan,
explore learning opportunities for health care leaders as
well as those for surgeons and, of course,
surgical staff.
And then, Eric, I would say the 5th
top priority, and, again, these are in no
particular order,
the administrators and surgeons communicate to us that
they care about the quality of products and
reliability of the supply chain. If there's something
that the pandemic taught us all, it was
the critical nature of supply chain
reliability.
And so, again, just to reinforce, we're proud
to manufacture, package, and sterilize products in America.
There's
no doubt that quality and reliability are critical
elements of a successful partnership. So we
encourage our listeners to learn more about those
capabilities
as well.
Jimmy, really appreciate,
how clearly you outlined those 5 key concerns
and priorities
for administrators and surgeon owners right now. You
know, starting with patient experience, kind of going
into cost pressures and inflationary pressures.
And then really appreciate that you also touched
on this this point about quality of products
and reliability of the supply chain.
So curious if you can just go a
little bit deeper on that one.
What new innovations or programs are you particularly
excited about with that one?
Yeah. That's a great question, Erica, and I
appreciate that.
At the top of the list for for
me personally and and certainly,
in the top for arthrex is,
we we've really been one of the early
pioneers in developing minimally invasive products and technologies
and techniques. And so we we feel that
we've certainly helped enable
surgical cases
to be able to be performed safely in
the outpatient inventory settings.
And so last year, Erica, we launched a
new initiative called ASCX,
which stands for the Arthrex Surgery Center Innovation
Program.
And this is incredibly exciting for
our long term partners here. And
this program allows hospitals, health systems,
ASCs,
surgeons, and even management company partners to collaborate
early in the process with us when they're
building new facilities or remodeling
existing ones.
With ASCX,
our partners can incorporate emerging technologies
into their planning and design.
Then we can support them as they move
into the operational and growth phases of their
business.
And so we have a lot of exciting
technology that we've deployed,
and it can they can learn more about
this exciting program by visiting arthrex.com,
and we have a ASCX page on the
website.
And then I'd also like to encourage our
listeners
to follow our new ASCX LinkedIn page to
stay up to date on the latest success
stories,
other relevant topics,
guest speakers that I'll be interviewing.
And then looking ahead,
I think following us to keep up to
date on what's next, what's new,
there'll be a weekly cadence for these posts,
and there'll be some special posts along the
way as well.
Certainly exciting to hear about the ASCX
program, Jimmy. Thank you so much for sharing
more about that with our listeners.
And it's exciting to think about the possibilities
that facilities can realize by that early early
on collaboration as you mentioned.
And so I wanted to just kind of
close our time together today by talking a
little bit more about that, about this idea
of partnerships and collaboration.
You mentioned in one of your responses earlier
that there can be some competitive advantages of
partnership.
And so looking ahead, how do you envision
partnerships playing a role in the future of
ASC's growth trajectories?
And in this area, what do you really
advise to leaders?
Yeah. Thank you, Erica.
Well, I think a couple things come to
mind initially,
and what we're educating and collaborating on is
the ability to simplify and streamline
are the first few things that come to
mind. So you have to limit the number
of strategic partners and then optimize those key
relationships. I can tell you, Erica, when I
was
trained, in the hospital world, and of course
we owned surgery centers,
but we were trained to add lots and
lots of vendors
and, you know, drive, you know, competition that
way. In the end, all that did was
add to complexity and cost. And in this
current market we find ourselves
in, it's really about how do we simplify
and streamline,
reduce
the number of partners, reduce the complexity and
cost in turn. And so, again, just encouraging
our listeners,
find your best partners and optimize those relationships.
So that's a common topic for us. And
when you do that,
you also minimize clinical variation, which we know
leads to cost creep on the balance sheet.
And with a long term strategic partner, like
Arthrex,
these dynamics become more predictable.
And so as you know, there's a balance
that must be achieved between cost, investing in
growth at the same time. It's not easy.
And we encourage administrators and surgeon owners
perform their proper due diligence, learn how to
leverage technologies
that can enable operational efficiencies or even at
capacity if
needed. Yeah. I appreciate it, Jimmy. You you
outlined so many important
top of mind subjects here.
That criticality of simplifying and streamlining,
including partners, and how that can minimize clinical
variation and also just,
drive efficiencies in many areas, especially when we
when facilities bring in technology. So really appreciate
those final thoughts. And before,
we end our time together, is there anything
else that you wanted to convey to listeners
that maybe we didn't touch on already?
Sure, Erica. I I would just like to
encourage our listeners, contact our local Arthrex representative.
Visitarthrex.com.
You can learn more about all the things
that we discussed today, our innovative products, procedures,
advanced technologies.
I also wanna reinforce
to have our listeners follow the Arthrex ASCX
LinkedIn page. You're gonna see lots of exciting
success stories and strategies implemented by partners.
Continue to
explore orthopedia.com
and all that rich dynamic content that I
mentioned before.
And please stop by and see us at
one of the exciting Beckers conferences. I think
there's a great opportunity there.
And there's an opportunity to work with the
local arthrex representatives
to understand what learning opportunities there are for
administrators, as long as there's a legitimate business
need or bona fide reason.
We'd like to share those opportunities with our
listeners as well.
So, Erica, really appreciate your time today. It's
an honor to be on the Becker's podcast
with you and really appreciate
your time.
Likewise, Jimmy. Really appreciate your time and your
insights and just a great discussion overall.
And also, of course, the the Becker's conference
shout out. So thank you for mentioning that
as well.
And we'd also, of course, like to thank
our sponsor for today's podcast episode, Arthrex.
Listeners, you can tune into more podcasts from
Becker's Healthcare by visiting our podcast page at
beckershospitalreview.com.