Curt Collins, COO of Palmetto Surgery Center in Columbia, S.C., joined Becker's to discuss obstacles to ASC growth.
Editor's note: This response was edited lightly for length and clarity.
Question: What's an obstacle to ASC growth?
CC: It's the same thing across the board — everywhere you go in the United States, it's staffing. It's unequivocally staffing. For us, being in partnership with Prisma Health, the larger hospital system in the area, we've been able to execute an agreement with them to jump on their group purchasing option so that we have their purchasing power, so supply costs have been improved. But otherwise, staffing is one of the biggest things.
I mean, we get fully staffed, we think everything is good, and then it just falls apart because somebody gets lured away for a $30,000 sign-on bonus at one of these major hospitals that locks them in for two years. Columbia is a small community, and there's just so much saturation of nurses in this area, so you're constantly competing.
Q: Do you have any specific strategies in terms of recruitment and retention that have been successful?
CC: A hospital is going to work you weekends, on-calls and things like that. We don't do that. We try to give people at least some sort of quality of life. Get them out of here by 2:30 for the early people and 3:30 for the later people so that they can enjoy life with their kids.
We also have a reasonably aggressive case pay bonus. It doesn't match a hospital, but we do provide a $3 per case bonus for every case that we do over 400, and our 12 month average has been 541 cases. It's a nice little incentive. But we try to be straight up with new hires right out of the gate and say, "listen, this is a very, very fast-paced environment. If you are not ready for a fast-paced environment, you know, to be able to enjoy a quality of life, then this is probably not your place."