Here are five tips for success with GI-driven ambulatory surgery centers in a competitive market.1. Add a procedure that competitors don't offer. Philip Grossman, MD, FACP, FACG, AGAF, FASGE, CEO and medical director of Kendall Endoscopy and Surgery Center in Miami, says his ASC has experienced the best results from direct-to-consumer marketing when the facility adds a procedure or service not available elsewhere.
"For example, a new medical device comes out and it's in clinical trials, and it saves somebody from a big operation to fix a problem, and the physician who's running it is in your facility," he says. "You might put out an ad that says, 'Do you suffer from heartburn? Are you tired of taking pills every day? Come to the XYZ ASC and get your heartburn solved without medication or surgery." He says the new procedure has to target a large enough segment of the population that the cost of the marketing is offset by your increased revenue.
2. Expand your schedule to allow more patient visits. Extending hours of operation can allow more patients to come in later in the day. Additional weekend hours have been made available to patients in the past to accommodate schedules, and John Gleason, administrative director at Berks Center for Digestive Health in Wyomissing, Pa., says that is an option that will continue to be made available on occasion in the future.
"We started out with a schedule that went from approximately 7:30 a.m. to 3 p.m. Monday through Friday, with the last case finishing around 3 p.m. In order to accommodate more cases, we added hours to the end of the day so that cases ended around 5 p.m.," Mr. Gleason says. "Our cases are scheduled every half hour, so this added an additional four patients per room to the schedule. An additional four procedures per room in three rooms over the course of a year adds approximately 3,000 cases to the center."
3. Demonstrate high quality care. Berks Center is able to prove to patients its focus on high quality care with the formation of its quality committees and performance improvement projects. The center also compares its performance to national benchmarks and standards as well as against the performance of other similar facilities.
"For the most part, we are able to demonstrate better performance compared to national benchmarks published by organizations, such as withdrawal times which measures the time to withdraw an endoscope from the patient during a colonoscopy," Mr. Gleason says. "Physicians examine the colon on withdrawal, and it requires a sufficient time period to do a good exam. We also look at safety statistics, such as how often patients have perforations, infections and post-polypectomy bleeds. We have very low incidence rates in these areas."
4. Market the center, its physicians and services. Connie Casey, administrator at Northpoint Surgery Center in West Palm Beach, Fla., says a significant amount of time is put toward recruiting new physicians in the area. Expanding the number of physicians at the surgery center allows more patients to receive care from the center. Additionally, Northpoint's reputation and services spread by word of mouth through its relationships with other facilities as well as news coverage of its hardship cases, which are cases in which a patient without insurance who isn't accepted at another facility is taken in at Northpoint. These situations, Ms. Casey says, also help drive up case volume.
"Ultimately, the facility is well-known in the area and speaks well for itself. The facility has great rapport with other facilities, so whenever they need anything I don't hesitate to let them borrow any supplies, and that shows our integrity," she says. "We also do a lot of hardship cases, and we do those every week."
5. Increase patient volume by working with primary care physicians. Developing working relationships with primary care physicians at other facilities and organizations as well as independent primary care physicians is a best practice for increasing patient volume, particularly for colonoscopy cases. Work with your staff to create a patient packet to distribute to the primary care physicians to give to patients they refer to the center. This way, the primary care physicians really have to do nothing else but fill out the referral form and send over their patients' insurance/demographics information and history and physical, which makes it much easier for them.
In those packets, there can be additional information on how patients can schedule screenings with us, prep instructions, facts about colonoscopies, what a clear liquid diet is and other pertinent information. You can also put this information up on your website for tech-savvy patients.
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