Todd Borst, managing partner of Smithfield Surgical Partners in Northern California, maps out six changes in staffing that can help boost profits at ambulatory surgery centers.
1. Offer generous pay. Highly efficient staff members are crucial in any push to maximize profits. One key way to attract highly efficient staff is to pay salaries that are competitive with hospitals or even higher than them. "We want the very best people, so we pay them the highest rates," Mr. Borst says. "The higher pay means we can have higher expectations in terms of efficiency." The added efficiencies more than make up for the higher pay.
2. Flex staff hours. Set aside a group of "contingent" employees who work part-time to accommodate flexible hours that are key to an efficient ASC. As a rule of thumb, contingent employees should make up about half of the staff.
3. Stagger employee hours. Staggering staff members' work shifts helps minimize the need for higher overtime pay. For example, one shift arrives at 6 a.m. to prepare for opening and start the first cases patients and the next starts at 10 a.m., so that it can process the last patients leaving recovery at the end of the day.
4. Beat the benchmarks. Measure employee productivity, compare it to national and regional benchmarks and develop strategies to beat the benchmarks. One key measurement is nursing hours per case. The national benchmark is 6.7 nursing hours per case, according to Mr. Borst. Through various incremental strategies, Smithfield has brought the statistic down for its outpatient surgery centers to 4.7 nursing hours per case.
5. Double up more duties. Since many ASC tasks do not require full-time work, employees are used to splitting their time on separate duties. Consider more ways staff members can double up. For example, Smithfield was able to push nursing hours per case below the national benchmark partly by having nurses double up. Nurse-managers spend at least some time in the clinic and the PAC unit manager sits out at the nursing station.
6. Keep working at it. Keep thinking of new ways to make staff more efficient. For example, "think about how your specialty mix might offer opportunities for a leaner, more efficient staff," Mr. Borst says. Each specialty has a different optimum level of staffing.
Learn more about Smithfield Surgical Partners.
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