What to ask when deciding on surgery center management.
What toolsets and experience fit your surgery center needs?
1. Expertise and Experience:
Management Support: Professional management companies or consultants often bring a wealth of experience and expertise in healthcare operations, including the development and growth of surgery centers. We’ll cover the individual domains that surgery center management groups typically cover and what management structures to choose from
Why Management Experts: These experts have a deep understanding of industry best practices, regulatory requirements, and operational efficiencies that may not be within the realm of a physician partner's expertise. They bring a broader perspective and the benefit of experience gained from working with multiple centers.
2. Strategic Planning:
Management Support: A skilled management team can assist in formulating a strategic growth plan that identifies target specialties, contracting strengths, patient demographics, and marketing strategies.
Why Management Experts: Management experts have a knack for market analysis, strategic thinking, and industry trends. They can provide an objective viewpoint, ensuring that the center's growth plan is well-informed and tailored to the competitive landscape.
3. Marketing and Physician Recruitment:
Management Support: Expertise in marketing and physician recruitment can help attract new surgeons, increase referral networks/synergies, and expand the center's specialties.
Why Management Experts: Marketing and recruitment specialists have extensive networks and know-how in reaching out to potential surgeons. They can leverage their relationships and marketing strategies to bring in new talent, which can be more challenging for physician partners without these specialized skills.
4. Regulatory Compliance:
Management Support: Staying compliant with constantly evolving healthcare regulations is challenging. Management support ensures the surgery center remains in compliance with local, state, and federal laws.
Why Management Experts: Regulatory compliance is a complex and evolving field. Management experts dedicate their careers to understanding and navigating these regulations. Their expertise minimizes the risk of costly compliance violations, which can be more challenging for physician partners to manage independently.
5. Financial Management:
Management Support: Professional financial management can optimize revenue cycles, negotiate favorable payer contracts, and optimize operational costs.
Why Management Experts: Financial management experts have a deep understanding of healthcare finance, including complex billing and reimbursement processes. Their negotiation skills and industry insights can lead to favorable outcomes, which might be beyond the expertise of physician partners focused on patient care.
6. Data Analysis and Performance Metrics:
Management Support: Robust data analysis tools and performance metrics help identify growth opportunities, areas for improvement, and cost-saving measures.
Why Management Experts: Data analysis requires specialized tools and skills. Management experts can harness data to drive decisions effectively. They understand which metrics matter most in healthcare and can guide strategic improvements, which might be challenging for physician partners who lack data expertise.
7. Quality Improvement Initiatives:
Management Support: Quality improvement programs ensure high patient satisfaction, safety, and outcomes, which can attract more patients and surgeons.
Why Management Experts: Quality improvement demands systematic processes, data analysis, and continuous monitoring. Management experts have the resources and experience to lead these initiatives effectively, ensuring that the center's reputation remains strong, which may not be the primary focus of physician partners.
8. Adapting to Market Changes:
Management Support: The healthcare market is dynamic, and management support can help the center adapt to changes in payer mix, regulations, patient preferences, and practice dynamics.
Why Management Experts: Navigating market changes requires constant vigilance and a deep understanding of industry trends. Management experts stay attuned to these shifts and can guide the center in adapting quickly. Physician partners may be more focused on clinical practice and lack the time or expertise to track and respond to market changes effectively.
In summary, while physician partners bring invaluable clinical expertise to a surgery center, management experts offer specialized skills, industry knowledge, and a broader perspective that can significantly enhance the center's operational efficiency, compliance, and growth potential. Collaboration between both is often the ideal approach, allowing physicians to focus on patient care while benefiting from management experts' guidance in strategic and operational matters.
9. Surgery Center Billing:
Management Support: Surgery center billing is a highly specialized area that involves accurate coding, claims submission, and revenue cycle management. Management support in billing ensures that the center maximizes its revenue potential, minimizes billing errors, and optimizes collections.
Why Management Experts: Billing in the healthcare industry is intricate, and errors can lead to revenue loss and compliance issues. Management experts in billing possess in-depth knowledge of billing codes, payer policies, and reimbursement procedures. They can efficiently manage the revenue cycle, appeal denied claims, and ensure timely payments. This expertise is crucial in maintaining the financial health of the surgery center. Physician partners may lack the specialized knowledge and resources required for effective revenue cycle management.
Including surgery center billing as a key management support initiative underscores its critical role in the financial stability of the center and highlights the expertise that management experts bring to this vital aspect of operations.
10. Extension of Practice
Management Support: Ensuring clinical and regulatory compliance on top of managing all the previously identified items above is a full-time role for even the most qualified of Administrators. Most Administrators focus on the patient’s experience once they step into the Center and forget the Patient’s journey starts and ends back at the practice.
Why Management Experts: Ensuring the patient’s Practice to ASC experience is a positive experience seamless to the experience at the Practice requires a significant amount of insight and coordination on the ASC Management Team’s part. Your Practice administrator already has a significant number of responsibilities to manage for the practice, adding additional duties at the ASC will be overwhelming.
Surgery Center Management Types
Consultancy Services: There are several healthcare consultancies specializing in surgery center development. They can provide expertise in regulatory compliance, financial planning, and operational efficiency. The right consultant can provide domain expertise that can go a long way in ensuring the success and operations of the center. They typically consult on an hourly basis, set fee basis, or project-based fee structure. Hiring the right consultants can provide insights and minimize operational pitfalls that can put even the best laid plans in danger. That said, consultants’ groups for surgery centers are typically either domain experts only (for example only focus on accreditation or only billing) or they are generalized operational consultants that are focused within the 4 walls of operations. They may not have the unified strategy that align with the overall interest of the partnership or help lead your center to its optimal growth potential.
Management Partners: Management entities that are highly experienced with developing, managing and growing a surgery center can be tremendously helpful in optimizing the full potential of a surgery center and generate tremendous value with their contributions. That said, it comes down to choosing the right management partner. Do they understand your practice needs, do they understand your specialty, and are they able to create value beyond what the consultancy services that are provided. It goes without saying this would be the most integrated approach to ensure you maximize your surgery center program. As vested partners, they will not only focus on all operations within the 4 walls, but also apply resources to the growth of the center and hone in on programs and cases that deliver to the bottom line and not just the top line. Similarly, they will apply their expertise to integrate the interests of the practice to match those needs of the center to ensure its sustainability and viability. The cons of this option are that the heavy due diligence should be done with a partnership you plan to get in bed with. Thoroughly reviewing the management groups experience, staff, surgeon references and management literature is a must when considering this option.
Self-Management: Assess whether your group has the expertise and resources to manage the center independently. The dynamics of the surgery center can vary drastically from a practice. There may be some overlapping skillsets that can be used but establish a church/state protocol may be the safest way to ensure a successful operation on both front. Also keep in mind that even if you believe your group is capable of setting up and running a surgery center, would that be the best use of the practice’s resources? Opportunity costs become a topic of conversation for those practices considering this route.
Management leadership and support plays a critical role in the growth and success of a surgery center. It brings essential expertise, strategic planning, and operational efficiencies that are often essential for attracting new surgeons, expanding specialties, and increasing case volume. When forming a partnership for a surgery center, evaluating the management team's capabilities and their commitment to growth should be a top consideration.
Mosaic Healthcare Solutions is a nationwide a surgery center management group with over 20 years of surgery center development, management and growth experience. Our mission is to protect and enhance the ASC landscape for those centers owned and operated by independent physician practice’s sustainability, viability, and growth. We are pioneers in formulating strategies that align interests with independent and new developing surgery centers to create an ideal ecosystem for our surgery center partners.
Reach out to us if you are considering new surgery center development, looking to take over an existing surgery center, or looking to optimize your current surgery center operations. CONTACT US HERE
