Staffing shortages are plaguing ASCs, hospitals and health systems across the country, exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic.
Rajiv Sharma, MD, owner of Terre Haute, Ind.-based Digestive Health Associates and nutritional supplement company Dr. Gut Happiness, joined "Becker's Ambulatory Surgery Centers Podcast" and said that the shortage has shown him ways to cut costs at his practice.
Note: This is an edited excerpt. Listen to the full podcast episode here.
Question: What trends are you following most closely?
Dr. Rajiv Sharma: [A big one is] the staffing issues. I have many friends in private practices, and I also work in some university settings. I see that access to good quality, efficient medical staff is becoming difficult with the vaccination mandates and with the COVID-19 outbreaks, and with locum tenens companies paying people more to travel. So all this has created a staff shortage.
This is also a time to pause and think about how you can make things more efficient. Do you really need to have six staff members on-site? Or can you have three on-site and three off-site working in your cloud system, still getting stuff done using technology?
Number one, everything is streamlined, and you have less exposure to COVID-type situations in the office. Number two, it minimizes your need for having a big office space. We actually ran this in my clinic in Indiana. We ran a virtual clinic where I just had one person on-site, and I had six crews working remotely in the EMR system. I actually dropped my overhead by 35 percent, and I was streamlined like there was no tomorrow.