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This is Laura Dirdle with the Becker's Healthcare
podcast. I'm thrilled today to be joined by
Nylene Flores, chief administrative officer of Lake Okani
Orthopedics.
Nylene, it's a pleasure to have you on
the podcast today.
Hi. Thank you, Laura. Appreciate the opportunity.
Now I'm looking forward to our conversation because
I know there's a lot happening in health
care right now and certainly
trends
as well as things that, you know, many
leaders are facing as challenges in in the
upcoming months. But before we dive into our
discussion, I was wondering, can you introduce yourself
and tell us a little bit about,
your current role in practice?
Yes. Sure. So as you mentioned, I just
recently moved to the Georgia area from Florida,
and I am the chief administrative officer for
Lake Oconee Orthopedics.
However, I'm also
consulting with surgery centers to help improve their
overall operations
and optimize
the their efficiency.
I have several, clients in Florida that I'm
working with,
in the area
and
to
help them
and improve
processes
to become
to optimize all of their efficiencies throughout the
facilities. So I'm having a lot of fun
working with surgery centers in that capacity.
Well, that's amazing here. And I know the
surgery center business is certainly
expanding and growing and experiencing somewhat of a
renaissance right now as it becomes a more
integral
and important part of the larger and broader
healthcare ecosystem.
So many people now
are really understanding and seeing and and seeking
out care at surgery centers. So that's great
to see. What What are some of the
trends that you're watching currently?
Well, as you mentioned, right, it's the migration
the great migration to outpatient
care. We've seen in the last couple years
the move
for total joints,
starting with knees. Now last year, we saw
the move to shoulders
and ankles.
So that great migration of bringing
these higher acuity procedures to the outpatient setting
is really
close to watch,
what we're doing and how the surgery centers
are adapting
and being able to
perform these procedures
safely and effectively in the outpatient space.
Also, something very important to watch is,
unfortunately, the reduction of health care providers in
general.
That's a little scary,
and to see
the
general population
growing older
and then newer doctors
being a little less
independent
and being more of an employed.
I think that's gonna also play into where
we're going in in health care in general.
And then also the growth and use of
AI
within the health care field, everywhere from billing,
your RCM management, to credentialing, to intraoperatively.
How we're using AI
in the health care fields is going to
be revolutionized, I think, in the next, you
know, 5 to 10 years.
That's fascinating to hear. And in particular, as
you're talking about technology,
AI, and that integration into
the health care space, I I can imagine
it's a challenge for large institutions, but for
for smaller practices and organizations, certainly,
being able to stay on the advance and
cutting edge of technology and the possibilities,
you know, take takes a really strong leader
that,
feels, you know, it's important to incorporate those
kinds of things into the broader processes and,
be able to continue to accelerate the business
model.
For sure.
What are you most focused on and excited
about right now?
Well,
actually, it ties into
everything,
that is moving. So with this great migration
and this acceleration,
it's created a
little bit of a gap. And so my
passion, my personal passion,
is education,
and
I really come from a
health care oversight and management background, which includes
credentialing.
And I'm not talking about the monster
of provider enrollment and contracting
with
insurance companies, which we know it's very political
and very frustrating in general. I'm actually talking
about the privileging and credentialing
with the actual health care organization, with the
ASC.
And I have a mission
to improve and continue educating
facilities
and to include this special focus in the
surgery centers
and improving their overall credentialing and privileging standards.
This is because in a hospital setting, this
has really been taken care of by a
department. So, really, perioperative or intraoperative staff never
has had to worry about credentialing, which is
why there's such a gap.
So with this higher acuity cases
coming into
the outpatient space,
it creates
the need to really
focus and bring our attention
to what we're doing
to these patients and how are we monitoring
this to optimize
and
really provide appropriate and safe care to our
patients
efficiently, safely,
and appropriately in the out patient setting, which
is really guided by,
protected by, and focused by through the credentialing,
peer review process within a surgery center. I
do feel that there is a little bit
of a gap, and I don't think that
surgery centers have caught up
to where the standards of a hospital are,
but yet we are performing the same kind
of procedures now.
So
we want to make sure that our administrators
are allowing a place
for credentialing and ongoing monitoring of these higher
acuity cases that are being performed.
We, as surgery sensors, are required to maintain
our SSI logs to see if you know,
to monitor,
complications and to really do the same thing
that hospitals are doing, but yet these this
is still being considered just a, you know,
paper function that, you know, maybe we just
have to monitor licenses when it really is
so much more.
So while we continue to grow in the
outpatient space, I think that there is a
need to focus
and educate,
leaders
to the importance of really what credentialing is
in a surgery center,
where it's going, what it needs to be,
what it needs to incorporate to be able
to continue
to accommodate safely
these types of procedures in the outpatient space.
The other thing I am so excited that
I hope continues to move into this direction
is electronic
charting. We really need to streamline all processes
and allow for appropriate reporting,
and still hasn't been mandated for surgery centers
to go electronic. But I feel that if
surgery centers begin adopting this paperless model, we
can
stop
killing trees
with all this paper and, reduce,
reduce paper and start
to promote,
digital
transformation
into the surgery center world just to become
more efficient and have a lot more accurate
reporting than counting papers.
I love that. I think, you know, it's
so critical, as you said, to really monitor,
and make sure that you're doing everything possible
to have efficient and effective operations and keeping
patients safe as well. I appreciate all of
the different,
challenges bringing some of those higher acuity cases
into the ASC present in achieving those goals,
but certainly it's exciting to see,
some of those, you know, opportunities to bring
them into the outpatient setting and then just
knowing and having that credentialing process in place
is so, so important.
And then boosted by the electronic charting and
those kinds of things can be a a
real game changer.
Now I'm wondering, Nylene, could you talk a
little bit about, some of the things that
you're most proud of from the last 6
to 18 months or so?
I am proud
to
be able to speak nationally
on the importance of
credentialing and privileging, which is so hard dear
near and dear to my heart.
I'm proud that we've been able to begin
this process of cross educating and promoting this
teaching in the ASC space,
working with ASCA and
organizations like ASCA and NAMS to collaborate
and teach this little nuance to ultimately protect
our patients.
So I've I'm privileged to,
be here in in this communication.
And I'm also,
very proud to see the growth and,
implementing
EHR in my clients right now that I
have. We've been doing a great job, and
to have the support of those softwares to
assist us in this move towards improving
these processes in a surgery center is really
exciting. And, obviously, opening a brand new orthopedic
practice
myself
is
great, and it has been very successful
with the support of, obviously, my physician leadership.
So lots, lots of growth in the last
year.
That's amazing to hear. Congratulations on the growth
and really just expanding,
your professional development. Now before we wrap up
here, I'm wondering what advice would you give
to evolving leaders, especially in the health care
space today?
Is grab the future with your hands, with
your mind. So educate yourself.
Be inquisitive.
Build your personal profile.
Understand that the health care industry
in general involves
everyone.
So just because you're just doing scheduling in
a surgery center, you're not just doing scheduling.
Understand everything you've learned
and had to know to book that case
and optimize that. If it's something that you
truly love, go for it. Get certified.
Look for where you can grow professionally,
if that's where you wanna go. Some people
don't don't want to, and and that's okay.
But
promoting yourself, understanding,
and respecting each other's roles, respect the nurses,
that do this day in and day out
and, you know, have to be there frontline
with the patients and have to have a
smile on their face. But then the nurses
respect the business office staff. That has to
be the first ones to greet those patients.
That has to call the patient with their
balance. You know? Yeah. The nurse has to
be on call, but guess what? We gotta
the business office has to deal calling those
patients out there. So respect each other, understand
understand how in the health care field, we
all depend on each other. One role is
not more important than the other, and that
goes from the physicians all the way down
to your front desk registration
because a physician cannot perform surgery
without having the support of the staff, and
the staff cannot have a job without the
surgeon. So we all just need to, understand,
work with each other, promote each other,
help each other out. Knowledge is power, and
the more we share knowledge, the better growth
we're gonna have, Not only as an industry,
as a person, but just in general, we
should all
move towards,
building up each other so that we can
improve health care overall.
Fantastic. I love that. What great advice and
so important from the heart. Thank you so
much, Nyleen, for joining us on the podcast
today. This has been a really fun conversation.
I look forward to connecting with you again
soon. Great. Thank you so much, Laura.