Physicians need to be trained on how ASCs operate to ensure efficiency, according to Brian Geissler, vice president and chief administrative officer for ASCs for Johns Hopkins Health System.
Mr. Geissler joined Becker's ASC Review to discuss his concerns about ASC physician training.
Editor's note: This interview was edited lightly for brevity and clarity.
Question: What are your biggest concerns for the next five years?
Brian Geissler: There continues to be a trend of physicians who leave their training and go to an employment model. Often that training lacks ASC experience. I think, as an industry, we need to partner better with academics. In our case at Johns Hopkins, thankfully, that's who we are.
We need to make sure that as we're teaching the future clinical workforce, physicians and surgeons in this case — especially where there's already going to be a shortage of them — how ASCs operate so that they can truly be prepared as clinicians to maximize them with their patient population.
Without this, the danger is that the industry ends up with physicians who start to think of ASCs as an extension of a hospital, like a hospital outpatient department, rather than the streamlined environment that they are.