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forward slash beckerspodcast.
This is Gracelyn Keller with the Becker's Healthcare
Podcast, and we are recording live at the
thirty first annual business and operations of ASCs.
I'm currently joined by Eliza August, who is
the administrator of Precision Care Surgery Center. So
Eliza, thanks for being here. And to kick
us off, let's have you share a little
bit more about yourself and your work in
the ASC space.
Sure. As she said, I'm Eliza.
I have been in the industry for about
fifteen years, if not more at this time.
I do run a orthopedic center out in
East Setauket, Long Island. I'm also the vice
president of my state association as well.
A little fun fact, I have done almost
every nonclinical function in an ASC
from the time I was probably in high
school, starting out working at front desk and
working my way all the way up to
administrator.
Wonderful.
And let's have our
market because in The US, it's 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?
Sure. So I'll start with the trends.
I believe, like, one of the first trends
is the migration or appropriate cases to the
ASC space. As technology basically is improving, we're
doing more and more cases in the ASC.
Years ago, total joints in the ASC was
not even a thing. And now here we
are doing total joints, total shoulders. We're doing
ACDF cases. Now there's cardiac in the AC
ASC space.
Second also is really, I would say, payer
pressure
and really employer steerage. So payer pressures, multiple
payers are realizing
the,
I guess, cost savings
of migrating all of their surgeries from the
hospital space to the ASC space. So the
point that payers are now creating programs
targeting ASCs to say, hey. Listen. We will
help drive volume to your facility if you
can get these cases done for us, you
know, at a lower rate. You also have
employer groups that are doing direct employer with
health care facility negotiations,
cutting out the middleman of the insurance,
looking for cost savings, especially for these self
funded plans.
You also have to look from perspective of
cost inflation for patients.
In this industry now, you know, health care
is the costs are rising.
Patients are having rising costs everywhere across the
board from food, housing, health care, and they're
looking for ways to still get appropriate care
at a cost effective way, and ASCs are
the answer.
And
I
I would say in regards to preparing, to
be honest with you, if you're a surgery
center and you're considering doing, let's say, a
new service line, really assess and plan for
new service lines and have
a really solid plan of how to implement
them. Also, really invest in your team, whether
it's hiring new people that are experts in
certain fields, whether it's billing or, let's say,
it's a nurse that does a particular specialty,
or really just training the people that you
have in house to really prepare to handle
influx of volume in different specialty.
Also, making sure that you're really assessing your
revenue cycle process. There are different billing nuances
with all types of specialties.
If you're not prepared to really handle it,
then you're gonna be doing all these cases
and not maximizing the revenue you need to
be able to actually handle the cost of
providing services.
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?
So I will say with the rise in
tech, first and foremost, basically integrated pre op
journeys. We're really able to live track patient
journeys from registration all the way to the
end of their journey when they're discharged from
their ASC. As well as being able to
share information with other physicians,
other hospitals, whether that's through centralized
health exchanges depending on the state that you're
in, I believe that that's really impacting health
care and being able to make proper health
care decisions for your patients.
Next, a lot of it really is AI.
When it comes to AI for coding and
documentation
and taking some of those nuanced little workflows,
basically, that
really could be done by a computer and
basically targeting your people to do other things
so that you're still being efficient as possible.
Also, really denial management.
We're an industry where dealing with physicians, they'll
code basically certain procedures, let's say, and there's
mistakes. And being able to predict the mistakes
ahead of time to be able to correct
your coding so that you're maximizing your revenue.
Because as we know as an ASC, we
rely heavily on our revenue to continue operations.
If you're not making any money, you can't
continue operations, and then you end up closing,
which patients end up suffering.
And then I would say, lastly, supply chain
management.
That probably is one of the,
I would say,
probably first places
that people don't realize that they're losing money
because you're spending, spending, spending, not tracking what
you're spending, not properly case costing, not basically,
you're taking on case maybe that you can't
afford to do and not realizing it because
you're not actively using
technology to really track it.
And follow-up to that, is there a single
technology or innovation that stands out to you
as especially transformative?
I can speak for myself personally.
My center has had some challenges in regards
to coding alignment
between facility and physician coding. You know? And
we're looking into technologies that are really based
on AI coding where it can read a
claim essentially or read a report
and read the patient's implant log and this
is last consult
and determine basically if the codes that we're
looking to bill actually align with the documentation.
It'll tell you if there's opportunities for improvement
in your actual documentation, if there was a
missed code, or if something that you're billing
just doesn't make sense to help kind of
prevent your denial management. So that's less work
on the back end for my revenue cycle
team.
And with 60% of health systems considering ASC
joint ventures and many ASCs already partnering with
systems in their communities, what opportunities do you
see for collaboration, whether with other providers or
vendors,
to strengthen patient care and operational efficiency?
I would say from the standpoint of hospital
JVs,
really working with the ASCs and not viewing
ASCs as competition, but more so as partnership.
Maybe offloading, let's say, the lower acuity cases
to the ASC space so that the hospital
could take on the higher acuity cases. We're
in an industry right now where ASCs and
hospitals, even though they are partnered together on
paper, a lot of times from operational perspective
do not partner together very well, and they
view each other almost as competition
for the same surgeries, the same physicians, when
realistically, we should just be you to be
an extension of each other. Then I do
say that there is opportunity with the hospitals
when it comes to payer partnerships.
Once the annulant ASC has a struggle negotiating
rates for itself, but partnering with a hospital,
that gives you more negotiating power to negotiate
better rates, basically having that partnership with your
hospital.
Well, Eliza, thanks so so much for joining
me today. Is there anything else that we
didn't touch on or final thoughts you'd like
to share?
So I would just like to say that
ASCs
are we're here to stay. We are expanding.
We're growing. We're relentlessly
consistent,
patient safe, you know, data driven,
financially disciplined.
I would say, though, as an ASC leader,
do not chase every single shiny object, basically,
that's out there. Really do your homework. Pick
technologies and partnerships.
Basically, that will compress your timelines and your
workflows,
improve your outcomes,
and just overall really be a good fit
for your facility. You don't want to,
I guess, increase your workload and increase your,
basically,
hardship of trying to run your facility. You
wanna make things as easy as possible for
yourself and your staff while still providing a
high quality of care. And the last thing
I would say is invest in your people.
Your people are really what matter because they
are the ones providing care to your patients.
If you do not invest in them, they
will not invest in the quality of care
for your patients.
Wonderful. Well, thanks for being here, and thanks
for joining me on The Doctors Podcast. Again,
we are recording live at the thirty first
annual business and operations of ASCs.
Thank you.