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forward slash beckers podcast.
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 Andrew Lovewell, who is
the CEO at Columbia Orthopedic Group. So, Andrew,
thanks for being here. To kick us off,
can you please share a little bit about
yourself and your work in the ASC space?
Yeah. My name is Andrew Lovewell. I'm the
CEO of Columbia Orthopedic Group. We are a
large private practice, MSK Ortho Group in the
state of Missouri.
Own a very large,
super successful ASC,
imaging center, pharmacy,
DME,
real estate investment,
PBM, telehealth company, kind of everything we have
that can touch the patient and increase our
value that we deliver to our patients. So
I've been in the health care space
about sixteen years in academics,
also ASC management, now, the private practice space.
So excited for our discussion today. Wonderful.
And let's start off talking about the ASC
market. 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 and market forces driving this
expansion and how should ASC leaders be preparing
today?
Yeah. I think that, one of the big
things that's driving that growth is the migration
of cases from the hospital to the ASC
space. You know, we see this happening a
lot in the ortho and MSK space with
spine and total joints.
See this happening in the cardiology space as
well.
I think also one of the big things
that's kinda making that
transition possible
is in America, you know, a lot of
there's a lot of self funded health plans,
you know, employer sponsored health care. So employers
are trying to save cost on what they're
providing for their employees,
and they've shifted a lot of their demand
towards ASC space. You saw that happen with
Walmart a few years ago with their center
of excellent program,
you know, debated on whether or not that
was successful based on who they used. You're
also seeing that happen with, you know, people
picking GI type places that are in the
ASC space over hospitals.
I would see a lot more employers kinda
make that demand
on how cases get shifted to the ASC.
You're also gonna see more employers offer free
or reduced cost on their health plan to
people who choose that route because it does
provide a savings to the employer group when
they're providing those benefits to the employees. So,
overall, it's kinda
mixes together to deliver a really perfect storm
for ASCs to expand. You know, as an
ASC, you gotta be ready for that by,
you know, do you have all
expand. You
know, as an ASC, you gotta be ready
for that by, you know, do you have
all the technology in place? Do you have
the staff in place? Or is your block
schedule optimized where you can kind of produce
at that level? So just getting all your
ducks in a row, making sure you got
the basics in place, you know, even before
we start exploring the AI side of things.
Like, let's just get the basics right so
we can deliver and, you know, get those
cases are gonna move over. So I would
give that kinda nugget as, like, you know,
just check all the boxes, be prepared for,
you know, the migration and continued migration of
cases coming.
And from AI and robotic surgeries to advanced
EHR systems, technology remains both make or break
factor and a critical driver of ASC operations
at scale.
How do you see a deeper tech integration
shaping the way ASCs deliver care and manage
their business over the next few years?
I think that's a great question. You know,
I I would anticipate
if if it's an ASC that hasn't invested
in technology yet. Right? So somebody who doesn't
have an EHR, doesn't have a inventory management
system or some type of nature there, I
would strategically look at that as an opportunity
for your next horizon of strategic planning because
that's gonna give you more data and information
to make decisions. I think that it's going
to provide you
with the tools necessary to recruit more surgeons
and also optimize your ASC better. I would
also tell you one of the big drivers
that we've used to,
help us from a patient facing standpoint
is using technology that automates a lot of
our processes, whether that's reminding patients to stop
taking a medication ahead of time, whether it's
having people fill out their health history via
a technological app so it integrates into our
EHR and our ASC. You know, just using
the tech to take away some of the
busy work that your staff have to do
today is gonna be huge because you're really
gonna want your staff to do the high
value or high
yield tasks, not the repetitive things that are
going to kinda get in the way of
making sure you have all that information in
place. So
leveraging the simple stuff out there, there's tons
of, you know, technology you can use. A
couple EHR PMs is HST and SIS, both
great products. You know, One Medical Passport has
a really nice interface and tool that you
can use. It's super slick.
IOS envy, a hybrid. There's great inventory management
systems today. Like, just explore these things, see
how they fit into your ASC and deliver
value for you.
And then, you know, when we get into
the AI space and robotics, like, let's let's
tiptoe into that cautiously and make sure that
it's gonna actually produce value before we explore,
purchase, and, you know, taking on that.
And follow-up to that, is there one specific
technology or innovation that stands out to you
as especially transformative?
I think it depends on what stage you're
at. Right? So if you say I'm an
ASC,
and I don't have a practice management system
with an integrated,
inventory management platform, well, that's a really strategic
thing you should do that would add value
very quickly. You could get some case costing
out of it. If you're an ASC that
has, you know, an EHR and the PM
and the inventory management system all integrated already,
you know, maybe we should look at some
kind of digital arrival and tracking system to
make sure that all of our patients fill
out their health histories and, you know, they're
getting all the automated prompting on the medications
and all those things ahead of time. You
know, is there a patient tracking software we
need to use, like, Ospitec in the ASC
so we can track our patients and know
actually how we perform on turnover times and
how we perform on in the room time
and those things. Like, just exploring where you're
at in the process and then figuring out
adjunctive technologies that support you
is is really the key player. You know,
if if you've got all those things done,
yeah, let's look at some AI. You know,
what what can we use? Is there an
AI coding software?
Is there an AI,
pre cert software we could use? You know,
we don't wanna also, like, over adopt point
solutions. So making sure you partner
with somebody who's a true partner, not a
vendor, is is really the the use case
you have to explore.
Anybody can add point solutions, but you're gonna
end up with point solution fatigue by just
adding and adding and adding to it. So
establishing
what it is we're trying to solve for
and who can solve for the most problems
at one time is going to be really
the key to success there.
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 one of the big places
that ASCs
can partner is is really in their internal
partners they already have. You know, if you're
with a physician's group, how can you get
more aligned with that physician's group? Are there
things you can do there
that demonstrate
economies of scale, whether that's, you know, doing
accounting or purchasing together, things like that? If
you're partnering with a management company, what other
offerings do they have that could come into
your ASC to
establish growth, whether that's physician recruitment funding or
some other mechanism like that. I would also
say if you're if you're partnering with a
hospital system, you know, there there kind of
is a, I would say, a competitive
thing that happens there where the hospitals want
the cases, you want the cases, you know,
just establishing
the ground rules and how we all work
together to get cases is ideal.
You know, I think that that's a very,
very key thing when you're partnering in a
JV like that.
Outside of that, partnering with vendors slash partners
is really important because there's a lot of
cool new innovative technologies that we talked about
that are out there that can help.
But, you know, you don't wanna over partner
because then you're just gonna be chasing contract
management and other things like that, and then
you're gonna find a partner for that. So
how do you figure out what's key for
you in kind of in inspecting or investigating
the right partner at the right time
is gonna be, very key.
And is there anything we haven't touched on
yet that you would like to share or
any final thoughts as we wrap up this,
podcast episode?
Yeah. Sure. I think I think one of
the final kinda takeaways I would give on
the ASC side of things is,
you know,
understand that you have power and you have
value that's very hard to match because
what we can do in an ASC
versus a hospital
or a larger tertiary care center
is so
valuable.
Employers want it. You know? So going out
and providing that education to employers to make
sure they're well aware of the things that
you guys can provide is is key. You
know, making sure you don't give that up
to the payers, that that power and that
value you have because the payers are gonna
try to diminish what we do as an
ASC. So,
you know, bringing in the medical director for
the, you know, Blue Cross plan in your
state, you know, talking to UnitedHealthcare,
trying trying to get more collaboration
through the payers is gonna be a big
deal and I think extremely important in your
success.
So just recognizing that what you do is
extremely valuable. It's a huge part of our
opportunity to bend the cost curve of health
care just in general. So making sure you're
informed, you know, you're reading Becker's, doing the
things, you know, that continue to educate you
as an ASC administrator
or owner is very essential. So I would
just encourage people, you know, to be informed,
be on top of the information,
and and know exactly
what you can provide to the employer group,
to the insurance, to all those, you know,
stakeholders
is gonna be a very big,
thing to keep track of.
Wonderful. Well, thank you so much for joining
me today and sharing these thoughts and insights
on the podcast. Again, we are recording live
at the thirty first annual business and operations
of ASCs. Thank you. Appreciate it.