The Surgery Center at Mississippi Sports Medicine in Flowood, Miss. was built with the future of healthcare in mind and the patient at heart. Helene Levenson, RN, BSN, senior consultant of clinical operations at Cardinal Health, and Meredith Warf, administrator for The Surgery Center at Mississippi Sports Medicine, explored how the practice developed the new expansion facility to enhance the patient experience and capitalize on the expanding outpatient portfolio during a Sept. 11 webinar hosted by Becker's ASC Review and sponsored by Cardinal Health.
A key trend in the industry is the continued shift of procedures from the inpatient to the outpatient setting. According to an Advisory Board report, 60 percent of all outpatient surgeries will take place in an ASC setting next year, an increase of 46 prcent since 2005.1 Ms. Levenson shared how this shift and other key trends, such as new procedures approved for the outpatient setting and value-based care, are driving growth and creating opportunities for new and existing centers in the ASC space.
Ms. Warf and the physician owners of the MS Sports Medicine saw the anticipated approval of total joint procedures for outpatient and the shift to value-based care as significant growth opportunities for their practice. They designed the new facility to maximize efficiency, allowing them to increase volume and add procedures as they’re approved without adding physicians or more space. But first and foremost, they designed it for their patients.
Their new 60,000-square-foot facility puts the patient first by providing access to everything they might need throughout their whole episode of care. They created a one-stop-shop, bringing the surgery center, 23-hour care suites, imaging, physical therapy, and pharmacy under one roof.
Readying for a changing industry
MS Sports Medicine has not only built a facility to improve the patient experience but has developed a patient-centric mindset that transcends the facility itself and is reflected in their business processes and relationships. Ms. Warf shared how they strive to develop strong relationships with their patients, payers and vendors.
For example, regarding partnering with patients, Ms. Warf explained how they’ve implemented a two-way communication pathway that enables an open line of communication between their patients and their staff. They also have a nurse navigator, which she described as “a clinical liaison, that meets with outpatient joint patients in their homes. This allows the navigator to assess the patient's home environment and educate him or her on the surgery and recovery process.”
The center and its physicians also strive to develop strong relationships with their vendors, utilize a single source for total joint implants and a dual source for its sports arthroscopy and trauma implants, trusting Cardinal Health for the rest of their supply needs.
Working with Cardinal Health to streamline its supply chain process has been essential for the practice's growth. At its old surgery center, vendors delivered supplies three times a week, which resulted in a larger-than-desired amount of stockpiled supplies. In its new center, MS Sports Medicine and Cardinal Health leveraged data to develop an ordering system and workflow that would accommodate daily deliveries.
"Historically facilities stocked an abundance of supplies for a number of reasons. ... expecting our daily procedure volume to increase, [we knew] it was time to work towards the idea of 'just-in-time ordering,'" Ms. Warf said. "Cardinal was able to help us assess our supply chain and develop a model based on our needs. We decided we needed a daily delivery [system], which they then helped us work towards, which has been great all around."
"We've used Cardinal for over four years now and they've been instrumental in helping us manage supplies and costs as we've grown to doing 600 cases a month," Ms. Warf said. "They've established our usage trends, which helps us with our near just-in-time inventory ordering, and assist us with forecasting, so when we doubled our caseload at the new facility we were well prepared and able to scale up our supplies quickly."
In August 2018, MSM was performing around 300 monthly cases. By August 2019, MSM doubled that figure and began performing 600 cases monthly. Relying on Cardinal's supply forecasts allowed the facility to order and stock just the supplies it needed to meet the new caseload.
Solving these supply-side challenges and developing patient-focused valued-based care initiatives successfully positioned MS Sports Medicine to serve Flowood and its surrounding suburbs for the next 30-plus years. Ms. Levenson pointed to MS Sports Medicine as a model for other centers to emulate.
"I think the wave of the future is how this facility is set up," Ms. Levenson said. "And I think what I like most about it is that it is truly about the patient and the experience they have when they come in for a procedure."
To view a copy of this webinar, click here.
Reference
1 Advisory Board; LEK Consulting, Ambulatory Surgery Centers: Becoming Big Business (2017); Health Care Advisory Board interviews and analysis.