Gabriel Figueroa, administrator at Manhattan Reproductive Surgery Center in New York City, told Becker's three main ways — including focusing on quality staff hires and properly managing surgical materials — that ASCs can improve their bottom lines in 2023.
Gabriel Figueroa: First, our biggest spend: our people. Staffing makes up our largest investment and principal expense. An unstable and inconsistent staffing environment can produce tremendous ripple effects throughout an organization that affect the bottom line. ASC operators are faced with staffing challenges today that they have never had in the past. Understanding all the factors involved in that equation are essential to short- and long-term solutions on how to find, train and retain the right people for your organization. We all understand the direct expense associated with turnover, recruiting and constant training. Highlighting indirect effects that can become very important over time, such as physician and patient satisfaction, key leader mission creep and poor performance are equally critical. Creating a solid approach to recruiting and a selection process to find the right kind of talent and personnel is an area I think serves us well to invest more into. If you think you can get away without it, you will most certainly lose this battle.
Secondly, paying close attention to your consumable expenses per case and managing materials properly is key. At my center, we make a concerted effort to limit the number of disposables we use and also do not open items intraoperatively unless necessary. I'm sure most ASCs follow similar procedures, but I'm not sure how many actually perform consistent case costing. Implementing vigilant case costing oversight and communicating the results with stakeholders is extremely important and can improve how profitable a case can be. It all adds up.
The last area relates to expanding the types of procedures and/or specialties your center can perform. This may be difficult for some single specialty centers; however if you speak to your physicians, I've found that even in a single-specialty center, there is room to expand the types of procedures you can incorporate. Multispecialty centers can continue to explore new opportunities with specialties not currently being offered by having meaningful discussions with physicians who would benefit from transitioning from the hospital to the ASC setting.