Alfonso del Granado is administrator and CEO of Covenant High Plains Surgery Centers in Lubbock, Texas.
Mr. del Granado will serve on the keynote panel “Top ASC Strategies: Smart Investments and Partnerships” at Becker’s ASC Annual Meeting. As part of an ongoing series, Becker’s is talking to healthcare leaders who plan to speak at the conference on Oct. 27-29 in Chicago.
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Question: What is the smartest thing you've done in the last year to set your organization up for success?
Alfonso del Granado: Helping my centers to get comfortable with constant change has probably been the best, if most exhausting, thing I’ve done. We successfully achieved center of excellence accreditation and earned matching designations from some of the largest payers in one specialty, became our area’s first robot-assisted total joint replacement center, begun the area’s first robot-assisted general surgery program and are about to go live with a new management and analytics platform. It’s been especially tough on the staff, but I have made sure that nothing happened without buy-in, and the results have exceeded expectations across the board.
Q: What are you most excited about right now and what makes you nervous?
AdG: I’m most excited about learning from groups outside our catchment area where certain procedure types have a much higher penetration rate than our local patient population. I recently toured a center where they do four times as many cases per capita of a high-profile and high-margin procedure type than we do, and it has everything to do with referrals and education, which I’m happy to help our surgeons with. What makes me nervous is still the double threat of supply chain and staffing levels.
Q: How are you thinking about growth over the next 12 months?
AdG: I’m very aggressively focused on three key areas: improving analytics to further optimize efficiencies, increasing complexity and acuity to bring on additional case types and improve margins, and pursuing additional center of excellence accreditations to both permit certain types of procedures to be performed as well as improve our position when negotiating reimbursements.
Q: What will healthcare executives and leaders need to be effective leaders for the next five years?
AdG: The Servant Leader model will be more important than ever. I’m aware of some colleagues from a prior generation who come from the “tell them what to do” school, and while that sort of mentality was never right, it’s become increasingly a liability for some established organizations that have not transitioned.
Q: What is your strategy for recruiting and retaining great teams?
AdG: We have a peer interview process that helps to increase the likelihood that the applicant will be a good fit with the team. Although the clinical director has final say, it’s beneficial for the applicant as well to know what their future team members are going to be like. We don’t want to bring someone in if they will be dissatisfied with the work environment or with their coworkers — not good for them, and not good for us. This process is not perfect, but we’ve found it beneficial.