Taylor Cera is administrator of Orthopaedic Surgery Center in Boardman, Ohio.
Here, Mr. Cera discusses the big trends his orthopedic-focused ASC is preparing for in the coming year.
Question: What accomplishment are you most proud of in 2019?
Taylor Cera: I'm most proud of our team's ability to execute the goals we've put in place for 2019. We knew this year was going to be quite challenging for us in many ways. We had scheduled state and The Joint Commission surveys, designed and implemented a new business management and e-charting system, and will transition into our brand new ASC in November. If you think about the level of detail on a micro-level that goes into building a software system for your practice as well as at the same time designing and constructing an ASC built for the future, we were making decisions and implementing change at a fast pace. I believe our success was because of the 'slow pace' on the macro-level. We put in the communication and we leveraged experts in different areas when we knew we didn't have the tools internally. I'd say we were ready for these changes.
Q: What are you looking forward to in 2020?
TC: I'm looking forward to getting into our new center and offering the highest quality orthopedic care to our community.
From a business standpoint, it will be interesting to see what CMS decides to do with total knee replacements in ASCs. It's an interesting time. This will be a game-changer in orthopedics. I can tell you we're ready for whatever they decide. Secondly, as we begin to use more data-analytics for decision making and efficiently running our operations, I'd like to see what data our new software puts out and how we will use this to continue to streamline operations.
Q: Does your ASC make pricing information publicly available or plan to do so in the future? Why or why not?
TC: Yes, we do. We've been posting our pricing since 2014. We did this because it simplifies the entire process. It's a low-cost, efficient process.
Q: What headwinds are you preparing for next year?
TC: I think it's the continued pressures we are seeing in healthcare. There's no new secret coming, I don't think. Continued consolidation, decrease in reimbursements, maintaining referrals. We will continue to be proactive, innovative and not afraid to change and move forward in finding ways to produce solutions to these issues. I think ambulatory care is at the top of most executives' minds, so we're already in a good spot there. Looking at partnerships could be a valuable opportunity.