It’s a new year – which means it’s time for everyone to start their New Years’ resolutions! In my role at Cardinal Health, I work with surgery centers each day to help them navigate major pain points and capitalize on opportunities for improvement.
Here are three suggestions I have for new year’s resolutions in ASCs that will help you overcome challenges and thrive in 2019.
1. Share employee recognition
If I could only pick one resolution to share, it would be this one. This can be an easy thing to do – and it makes such a difference in your facility! Not only does it motivate employees and help them feel valued, it supports increased employee productivity and helps attract and retain top performers.* So why doesn’t this happen all the time?
The real reason? Surgery centers get busy – and as a result, initiatives like employee recognition suffer. But they don’t have to! There are tools available that help make employee recognition easy and meaningful. I love this recognition toolkit from Cardinal Health. It gives you everything you need to keep your resolution of sharing recognition going all year long.
There are certificates that you can print and fill out when you have something special to say, and recognition badges that say it all for you – when you don’t have time to do it yourself! I highly recommend using this no-cost to you toolkit to get started with employee recognition – and keep it going all year.
2. Plan a time to streamline operations
Streamlining operations and improving efficiency are always a top priority in a surgery center – it’s one way you can focus on growing your business. But the day-to-day priorities and thinking about what needs to be done right now often push this to the back-burner. Knowing that’s likely to happen it’s important to plan ahead.
Plan a time to walk through your processes when you know it’s a slower time in your facility – which might even be a weekend. Use that time to identify opportunities to improve efficiency and create a follow-up plan. At Cardinal Health we have a dedicated team of clinicians that can help you with this process – find out more about this no-cost to you service here.
3. Lean into your distributor to identify cost savings
Even cost-cutting champions need a little help from time to time. The best type of customer/distributor relationship is one where you can lean into your distributor when you need to cut costs but don’t know where else to look. They should provide objective recommendations and share benchmarks for facilities similar to yours.
I hope these suggestions were helpful for you as you think about kicking off 2019 on the right foot! For more information on how Cardinal Health can help you in 2019, visit cardinalhealth.com/surgerycenter.
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* Mann, Annamarie, and Nate Dvorak. “Employee Recognition: Low Cost, High Impact.” Gallup.com, 28 June 2016, www.gallup.com/workplace/236441/employee-recognition-low-cost-high-impact.aspx.