How Can ASCs Recruit New Physician Partners?

By 2025, healthcare experts predict there will be a shortage of 41,000 surgeons, and for ambulatory surgery centers, this could mean it will be harder to find physician partners.

At the 20th Annual Ambulatory Surgery Centers Conference in Chicago on Oct. 25, two members of Regent Surgical Health — Bo Hjorth, vice president of business development, and Christine Henry Musa, director of business development — shared how ASCs can potentially avoid this challenge and attract new physicians to their business.

A starting point for all ASCs should be research, Mr. Hjorth said. They must know how many competitors are in their market, what their strengths and weaknesses are and what the physician saturation level looks like. From there, ASCs can pinpoint potential targets, which often come from existing physician partners.

"It is important to define the ideal physician partner," Mr. Hjorth said. "When you look at your capabilities in your surgery center, you have to understand what's going on in the market and what you can do to take advantage of your specialty mix."

Ms. Musa said finding and courting new physicians is not a quick process. In fact, it could take a year or longer before a physician commits to a facility. However, there are several steps ASCs can take to make the process successful.

First, ASCs should set a date for when the physician can come in and tour the facility and also meet the other physician partners. Then, ASCs will want to supply the physician with detailed information on three keys areas: clinical (accreditation status, adverse event rates, Medicare survey results), operational (operating room turnover time, physician and patient satisfaction, type of equipment and supplies) and financial (payer contracts, net revenue per case, capital investment and projected financial return). The ASC should then verify the credentials of their candidate.

It's imperative, Ms. Musa said, that ASCs "customize the value proposition" to tailor the needs of every physician candidate. A generic, vague proposition won't get the job done, she said.

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