As an increasing percentage of surgeries take place within ambulatory surgery centers (ASCs), it is critical for ASC management teams to sustainably serve higher patient volumes. ASCs have faced an uphill battle against rising costs, declining reimbursements, and ongoing staffing shortages. Executives often turn to anesthesia management companies to alleviate these challenges. However, if not managed properly, these partnerships can introduce a new slate of issues, including a lack of transparency, stifled innovation, and operational unpredictability.
Optimizing Operations
This is why NorthStar Anesthesia has built a dedicated ASC division, allowing our team of clinicians and operations personnel to provide tailored services responsive to ASCs’ unique needs. NorthStar’s structure ensures that our ASC partners receive consistent focus and concierge service.
“Successfully running an ASC involves a set of considerations distinct from traditional hospitals,” said Cindy Myers, NorthStar’s Vice President of ASC Operations. “Our ASC division understands these nuances, allowing us to deliver tailored solutions. This includes everything from recruiting strategies to revenue collection capabilities and dynamic staffing models. When an ASC turns to NorthStar for anesthesia management, they are partnering with an organization that is acutely aware of how to succeed, and is wholly committed to doing so,” she added.
Prioritizing Providers
Clinicians are the backbone of healthcare, which is why NorthStar is focused on fostering an environment that maximizes retention. NorthStar’s commitment to anesthesiologists and Certified Registered Nurse Anesthetists (CRNAs) begins at recruitment, where we utilize best-in-class strategies to attract top talent. We have deep relationships with local anesthesiology training programs and leverage digital marketing to reach target candidates. And once we successfully onboard providers, our knowledge of regional markets allows us to design compensation structures that are competitive and meaningfully reward performance.
Similarly, NorthStar is taking an innovative approach to address a common issue confronting ASCs: how to maintain consistent staffing levels amidst a talent-constrained environment. To solve this, NorthStar has turned to a data-driven strategy, implementing an analytics system that is responsive to surgical schedules at each site. This gives providers a greater sense of predictability, leading to greater job satisfaction and lower rates of attrition, evidenced by NorthStar’s 92% enterprise-wide clinician retention rate.
Controlling Costs and Realizing Revenue
Minimizing clinician turnover is only one way NorthStar helps our ASC partners mitigate costs. When an ASC partners with NorthStar, they gain access to our suite of analytical tools, allowing them to utilize site-specific data to maximize efficiencies. As an example, ASC managers can assess whether OR utilization is calibrated to avoid costly idle periods. Similarly, NorthStar can determine whether a partner’s PTO policy is resulting in them relying on premium labor to fill gaps. And by gaining an awareness of the relationship between clinical, scheduled, and budgeted hours, ASCs can design staffing structures that maximize alignment between providers, patients, and procedures.
In addition to helping our ASC partners control spend, NorthStar concurrently works to increase revenue. Recurring contract management is informed by market analysis to secure and maintain competitive rates from payers. Combined with our best-in-class revenue cycle management capability, we have reduced patient bad debt to 2.2% across our footprint. And our payment support technology has boosted balance-after-insurance collection rates by 10%, yielding a 96% net collection rate and a 99.48% clean claim rate across the facilities we serve—impressive levels for the anesthesia industry.
Seeing Success
NorthStar’s dedicated ASC focus is producing tangible results. “When I think about our relationship with EyeSouth Partners, which began with one surgery center in Florida, and has since grown to seven additional centers across Ohio, Chicago, and Atlanta, it affirms our approach,” said Adam Spiegel, CEO of NorthStar. “Our triad model, where decisions are jointly made between anesthesiologists, CRNAs, and operations teams encourages collaboration and accounts for all perspectives required to drive success. Most importantly, this is being demonstrated by improved patient outcomes, shown by CMS’ Merit-based Incentive Payment System, which rated 97% of NorthStar’s reporting entities as ‘exceptional’ in 2023,” he added. “What NorthStar offers our ASC partners works, which is why our ASC market segment now includes 125+ sites and has experienced 61% growth in revenue over the past three years.”
As NorthStar looks ahead to 2025, the company is investing considerably in its ASC division. We invite surgery center owners and administrators to engage with our leadership on what a future partnership for anesthesia coverage at your center could entail. Please reach out to NorthStar’s Chief Growth Officer, Dennis Shin at dennis.shin@northstaranesthesia.com, if you are interested in learning more.