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Nader Samii – Preparing for Quarterly Board Meetings
101 Plays1 year ago
Every ASC is required to hold a quarterly board meeting in order to stay in compliance and remain accredited. Nader Samii, CEO of nimble, is on today to talk through how you can make those meetings as impactful, productive, and engaging as possible. He walks through how to properly prepare, the essential financial metrics you should always include, how to get ahead of potential surprises, and a bunch of other topics so you can look forward to these meetings instead of just going through the motions.
In our news recap, we’ll cover strategies to make your operating room more sustainable, what’s going on with the Lower Costs, More Transparency Act, the latest on EHR adoption, and, of course, end the news segment with a positive story about an emergency nurse in Arizona who went above and beyond the call of duty to save a man’s life.
Lastly, this will be our last episode in 2023! Our next episode will be published on January 9th. 2024 and will be a highlight reel of 12 of our most recent guests answering the question, “What is one thing our listeners can do this week to improve their surgery centers?”
Here is some content to hold you over through the two-week break:
- Six quick videos highlighting benchmarking data
- State of the Industry Report
- Watch one of our most popular episodes of the year
Articles Mentioned:
- Operation Room Strategies for Sustainability
- House Passes Healthcare Transparency Bill
- Trend to Watch: Is EHR Adoption Critical for ASCs?
- An ED Nurse Crosses Busy Freeway to Save a Life
Thank you so much for all your support this year, and I hope you all have a wonderful holiday and New Year’s celebration. We will see you again in 2024.
Brought to you by HST Pathways.
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Transcript
Introduction to Podcast Format
00:00:01
Speaker
Welcome to This Week in Surgery Centers. If you're in the ASC industry, then you're in the right place. Every week, we'll start the episode off by sharing an interesting conversation we had with our featured guest, and then we'll close the episode by recapping the latest news impacting surgery centers. We're excited to share with you what we have, so let's get started and see what the industry's been up to.
Enhancing Board Meeting Productivity
00:00:27
Speaker
Hi, everyone. Here's what you can expect on today's episode. Every ASC needs to hold a quarterly board meeting in order to stay in compliance and remain accredited.
00:00:39
Speaker
Nader Sami, who is the CEO of Nimble, is on today to talk through how you can make those meetings as impactful, productive, and engaging as possible. He walks through how to properly prepare, the essential financial metrics you should always include, how to get ahead of potential surprises, and a bunch of other topics so you can look forward to these meetings instead of just going through the motions.
News Recap: Sustainability, Legislation, and EHR
00:01:04
Speaker
In our news recap, we'll cover strategies to make your operating room more sustainable, what's going on with the Lower Costs More Transparency Act, the latest on EHR adoption, and of course, the new segment with a positive story about an emergency nurse in Arizona who went above and beyond the call of duty to save a man's life.
00:01:26
Speaker
And one more thing to share before we dive in, this will be our last episode in 2023.
Upcoming Break and Future Episodes
00:01:33
Speaker
Our next episode will be published on January 9th and will be one of my favorite episodes that we do, which is a highlight reel.
00:01:41
Speaker
At the end of every discussion, we always ask our guests, what is one thing our listeners can do this week to improve their surgery center? So we are in the process of clipping the answers from 12 of our most recent guests, and we'll put them all together for you so you can have 12 great pieces of advice from various industry leaders to start your year off on the right foot.
00:02:03
Speaker
During our two week break though, there is so much great content on our YouTube channel, so I'll put a few links in the episode notes to make it easy to find.
Closing Remarks and Holiday Wishes
00:02:13
Speaker
Until then, thank you so much for all your support this year, and I hope you all have a wonderful holiday and New Year's celebration, and I will see you again in 2024. Hope everyone enjoys the episode, and here's what's going on this week in surgery centers.
00:02:33
Speaker
Nader, welcome to the show. Thank you, Nick. Really excited to be here. Appreciate you having me. So to jump in, Nader, if we think about a standard or illustrative board, let's think about an independent ASC as an example. From your experience, what does a typical board composition look like in terms of board members?
00:02:55
Speaker
So, I would say typically you would have the CEO or administrator, whoever's running the center, absolutely on the board and an important part of it. You typically would have physician board members that would be part of that, tends to be the larger shareholders, the medical director and other larger shareholders tend to be
00:03:17
Speaker
your board members. I would say I see it less, but I would encourage people to think about bringing outside board members into and joining a board that may be bringing an entirely different perspective. They aren't in the day-to-day of running surgery centers and aren't mired in the
00:03:36
Speaker
You know, the quagmire of what is healthcare sometimes, but getting people who might add value in places that you want value added, whether it's someone who's got a patient experience or just a broad customer experience background, growth orientation, marketing orientation, something that, again, brings maybe a different perspective than is on the board.
00:03:55
Speaker
I think is really helpful and advisable to people and just getting a completely different lens in which they see the world. And then I would also say, depends on, again, the setup of the ASC. You could have health system management. If there's health system ownership, you could have private equity board membership. If there's private equity ownership.
00:04:17
Speaker
or of course management company, ASU management company representation if there's ASU management involved. And again, depending on majority or minority as to how many seats those different groups have. Sure.
00:04:29
Speaker
And I wanted to touch on the, the comment around the outside board members. I think that's a good idea. And I've seen that less in the ASC industry that I may be seeing other outside industries where it's more common. Have you seen any backgrounds for outside board members that into work well or be a good fit?
00:04:47
Speaker
and within the ASC space? Like I said, I think you've got plenty of experience with your current traditional board members that will cover general healthcare topics, quality, safety, clinical operations, financial or revenue cycle operations. There's plenty of those people that typically already have representation. So I would seek people that would really help me encourage a different way of thinking that would be growth oriented.
00:05:18
Speaker
I'm with you. I don't see it very often, but I think it would be really interesting to get people, community leaders that again, come from a sales background, a marketing background, a, you know, even a hospitality or high-end experience background. Those types of things I think would be really interesting compliment to, to do what exists today.
00:05:38
Speaker
Got it. And so as we think about those kind of typical board members that you've laid out, what do you see in terms of the typical goals and objectives of a board member? And does that vary in terms of shareholders versus the CEO admin, for example?
00:05:54
Speaker
So i think it's a good question i think again because you have relatively traditional board members i would say a lot of times you'll see board meetings that so i guess i'll answer from the standpoint of what's happening in a board meeting and then how.
00:06:09
Speaker
the objective of the board member. So as a big picture, the objective of the board member should be really helping the operators of those centers and the physicians of the centers think strategically about how to build, grow, operate,
00:06:25
Speaker
in the most efficient, effective, profitable, high-end experience type of way. So I think that's probably would be what I would say maybe should be the goals. I would say a lot of times every center is different, but a lot of times board meetings, and I think not just ASCs, but companies in general can get very into a
00:06:45
Speaker
presentation of the facts and updating of what happened, reporting of, again, your quality metrics, your financial performance, all of which is important. But when you get this type of audience together for two hours, trying to find a way to bring much bigger picture, strategic, thoughtful discussions to the board, where you're still going through a process, I would say it's discussions on quality, safety, clinical, and financial operations.
00:07:15
Speaker
our table stakes, and that should be in a packet that goes to the board. I would pull all that together, send that in advance, let people get updated. And then if something is really awry with it, either really good or really bad or challenging, then raise it from that perspective as opposed to just going in through and communicating exactly what the numbers were. So looking at a board level, I think what makes the meetings more productive and powerful and effective.
00:07:40
Speaker
is trying to find ways to utilize these board members to help you think through and solve big picture strategic issues and problems to again, make you as successful as you can. So, you know, there may have been a big drop in one of your higher paying specialties or higher paying type procedures, trying to understand what's going on with that. There could be challenges. I've seen we've all have labor challenges in today's market brainstorming with other leaders in the community. How do you solve
00:08:05
Speaker
some of those types of issues, bringing big picture capital allocation type decisions to the board, helping you think through investments, whether it's in med tech and biologics, does it make sense to invest in these types of technologies? What will be the pro and con? Yeah, we know the cost and what's the upside and how can we structure things? Really thinking through that again, physician recruitment.
00:08:26
Speaker
Does that make sense? Going after adding a new specialty, expanding your surgery center. And again, what's the capital involved in that? But what's the ROI from that perspective? And how would you go about filling up the OR? And are you going to be doing it from a wise and thoughtful place? It will long-term pay off. I think those are the things, the more that you can go down that direction. And again, think of it as a packet of financial and operational information that goes out. It goes to everyone. They get that two, three days in advance of the board meeting. They've reviewed it.
00:08:56
Speaker
You flag any, you know, maybe there's a five, 10 minute administrator CEO update to level set up one on the financials and then have a five to 10 page strategy to deck to get you into the more that you can get into really this kind of interesting dialogue is where I think you really get value because the bottom line is I think most operators generally know their business.
00:09:16
Speaker
And to take two hours every month or every quarter and to use, again, this caliber person's time to just give a bunch of updates as opposed to really being thoughtful about how do we solve big problems and build and grow for the future. I would encourage people to do that. And I would say you see this approach probably less than the traditional approach of just giving a lot of updates on what's happened and what's going to happen next month.
00:09:40
Speaker
Right. And I like that recommended agenda and structure. I was going to ask you about that. And if I'm hearing you right, it seems like your recommendation is, hey, prepare the materials in advance, leave sufficient time, assume that the board members are going to have reviewed that ahead of the meeting, and then have the upfront portion more be around questions, drilling in abnormalities or things unexpected versus a readout of kind of the standard financial pack, right? Yes, absolutely.
00:10:10
Speaker
And then if you can do that, that leaves more time, even a bulk of the time at the meeting, potentially to discuss the more strategic, the more meaty, you know, problems or opportunities for the center. Yeah. I very much think that, and I think if you play that out a little bit, I think you end up with a very engaged and excited board as well, because that is more interesting. Sitting back, otherwise people can get into a bit of a rote process and there's just constant update and discussion, et cetera.
00:10:39
Speaker
Now someone's going to go down a rabbit hole of some number that's in there, which, you know, was it meaningful? Was it not? Again, you just do that work for them to flag what's meaningful or not. But I really do think it makes for an interesting and fun and engaged board. And again, those are smart people. The more thoughts you can get there really can help or the long haul with your organization. Right. You mentioned the information pack that goes into it. Who's typically responsible for preparing that?
00:11:09
Speaker
It's a good question. I would say generally that CEO administrator of the center is typically leading the charge there. They're probably not the source of all the information. A lot of this information is going to be in, I've seen the software system and being thoughtful about how you set up what data goes into your software in terms of cost, the cost side of it, for example.
00:11:29
Speaker
And ideally deciding what are those, if you can automate and have the basic reporting type of information set up in a way where at the month end you hit print, when the month is closed and you've got all of the information you need from both the clinical and financial perspective. And that goes in a set of, here's the updates and getting a little bit of back and forth between yourself and your board to decide.
00:11:53
Speaker
what level of detail they want and what specific reports you want. But I think doing it that way can make it efficient. But yeah, there's probably some coordination with the, you know, your clinical people who are in charge of the clinical side, people in charge of financial side, whether it's a revenue cycle company or your internal RCM team, there's probably some work to coordinate with that. But again, now you're thinking about quality, safety, clinical ops, financial ops are the kind of the big buckets. Got it.
00:12:21
Speaker
And so it seems like the admin CEO is oftentimes quarterbacking that information packet, like you said. Absolutely. Do they run point the admin CEO and presenting that out at the board meeting? That's in my experience, again, obviously every center and every team is a little bit different.
00:12:37
Speaker
But my general experience is, again, if you think about a lot of the physicians are busy running around, they're scrambling to get to the board meeting on time. So, yeah, the CEO or administrator typically leading the charge on pulling it together, leading the charge on pulling the overall board packet and presentation together and delivering it. Now, depending on what's happening with the center and how interesting or strategic or what issues are going on, you know, there may be, for example, the medical director, maybe there's some
00:13:05
Speaker
pre-dialogue that happened to be like, Hey, here's where I'm planning to go with the board meeting. You're my board chair. I would, I would certainly have my board chair in the loop and to the extent that other people are engaged and active, never hurts to ping them in advance and say, Hey, here's big picture of the agenda. Maybe send that out a week or two in advance. Here's the big picture agenda we're going to cover. Let me know if there's any other.
00:13:26
Speaker
topics or anything you guys want to discuss and we can make sure that gives us a couple weeks to pull that together and include it. So I think that's good hygiene and good practice again, depending on the level of engagement of your board members.
00:13:37
Speaker
Yeah, that seems like a great way to ensure alignment between the center management and the board. Yeah. I think what it does too, Nick, and when you're doing that is you're really avoiding, which is probably the single most important thing in any of these situations is avoiding surprises, at least avoiding bad surprises. Good surprises are still to avoid them ideally. You can certainly be okay getting over a good surprise, but you don't want that meeting people to find out something that's gone wrong or gone bad. And that's the first time they're hearing about it. The more you can socialize that, run it by.
00:14:07
Speaker
And not just at that point, by the time they're socialized, they're aware of it, they know you're working on it by the time the board meeting comes, they're like, hey.
00:14:14
Speaker
Everyone understands here's this issue we've had and here's what we're doing about it. Here's our solution and our plan makes for a much better board meeting and overall relationship between the leadership and the board members. Right. Totally agree. I want to shift gears now to ask you a little bit about some of the key financial and revenue cycle metrics that are often reviewed in a board meeting brought into a board meeting. If we think about good KPIs or metrics on the financial side,
00:14:43
Speaker
that speak to past performance of the center. I'll ask you for a couple of metrics you'd call out and also more of the future leading indicator metrics. Are there a couple of metrics you'd call out there as it relates to future leading indicators?
00:14:57
Speaker
Yeah, no doubt. I'll mention a couple that are a little bit of clinical, which maybe we as an organization spend a little less time on. But looking at your average wait time, average time in the operating room, average time kind of per surgery, utilization of your OR staffing costs, any quality issues. I think those are things that would also come into play in a board meeting that are important, but shifting to the financial.
00:15:22
Speaker
I think it's important to have a strong understanding of your, obviously, baseline level of what's your overall typical volume, cash collections, what your write-offs were, like basic financial metrics. Of course, you should always be looking at that, and I like to look at that on a trailing 13-month basis so you can look at seasonality from a year ago, too. But when you're getting into the actual metrics, revenue per case is
00:15:48
Speaker
Really important and taking that and breaking that down by specialty and by payer as well as interesting ways to look at it even by provider.
00:15:58
Speaker
And that starts to give you some real information on what's coming in. If you're doing total, you were a sports med group, and now you brought in a total joint surgeon, or you were pain and eyes in GI, and now you're looking, you've got capacity, and you go add, again, let's say orthopedics comes with that. The profile is going to be very different. You might be generating $4,000 cash per case on an ortho case, and maybe that takes an hour and a half.
00:16:25
Speaker
been paying, it might have been $1,000 or $1,200, but you get through more and doing the math on... So that's your revenue, but also, of course, now looking at your cost per case to get you to your profit margin per case. I would say that is at the top of the list where some groups will look at, some don't. I think it should be looked at more and more consistently and almost lead with those things. And again,
00:16:48
Speaker
Thinking about it by specialty, by payer, by provider is super helpful. And understanding the volume shifts, right? If you've got orthopedics or spine or et cetera, cardiology, bigger paying procedures. And now you've had a big drop in volume because a lot of people will say, well, look, my volume is 300 cases every single month. And that's great, but not all 300 are made the same. And so there will be a thought for us if it's 300, I made a million dollars last month. Why don't I always do that?
00:17:15
Speaker
if the mix of the payer mix and the procedure type mix and specialty mixes are staying the same, then sure, that makes sense. But if you had 50 total joints one month and six the next month for whatever reason, that's 10 to $15,000 per procedure is going to move your needle pretty aggressively. So really understanding what's happening within that. And a couple other metrics that say average charges per case helps flag some of that too, or again, sort of gives an indication if you're doing a higher acuity type procedures or not.
00:17:44
Speaker
net revenue percentage. So what are you collecting of what your established net revenue is? What is your actual collections coming in? And then you have your basic AR over 90 AR days credit balances. But I think another one that is harder for some people to track, but really important
00:17:59
Speaker
If you can find a way to come up with a system to be able to roll up, there's so many different reasons for denials, but identify the roll ups that you can really be like, what are the five main fundamental reasons we're getting denials? I would say that with the revenue and cost per case to get to profit margin per case, probably the most important because
00:18:20
Speaker
What's causing your denials gives you the information to see what can you do to fix things, wherever, whatever's causing it, whether it's pre-auth issues or improper documentation or billing issues, whatever is the cause of it. You are now in position to go, you've got root cause and you can go solve it. And that's pretty powerful information. And like I said, allows you to really change how you're running your.
00:18:45
Speaker
Organization cuz you get those denials consistently at some point if you're not staffed properly just backlog of Denied claims and someone gets behind and they don't follow up within the timely appeal timeframe then people run into issues with losing those dollars and especially if you're in bigger especially you can lose the implant dollars that were hard costs to plus the cost of procedure in your staffing so it can be pretty powerful to get all that right.
00:19:11
Speaker
Yeah, that's a good tip to focus in on the denials in particular. Wanted to ask you a little bit, you mentioned some of these metrics, whether it's revenue per case by specialty or denial percentage, or our days, collection days. If you think about those metrics, I would think about a center that's part of a management company. Part of the value the management company can provide is, hey, we've got five, 10, 15 other centers, and so we can help you
00:19:40
Speaker
quickly understand where are you out of kind of range of what you'd expect versus where are you in range and what are the potential problem areas.
00:19:49
Speaker
But for independent facilities that don't necessarily have that, do you feel like those centers have good benchmark data or have a good understanding of where they should be in terms of those metrics? I would say no, generally they don't, and it's very difficult to expect them to. For example, there are other third-party, whether it's VMG or other third-party sources of data,
00:20:11
Speaker
But then you have to understand really, okay, what was that comprised of? Are those big management company centers? Is it a different region, et cetera? So there are some third party sources that you can use, but again, there's so many variables that make that either applicable or not.
00:20:28
Speaker
to you. So I would say having someone who's got expertise, whether it's on your team or externally, who has a sense of essentially what, really what should managed care contract rates look like? What is a reasonable, sensible, good deal for what you're doing and where you're doing it? And then having someone guide you through what are these metrics you, and whether you're doing it in house or outside, it doesn't matter.
00:20:53
Speaker
you've got to find someone who has the expertise because this is the fundamental problem and challenge with healthcare and especially these independent groups. Even if you're not an independent group, you're part of a big management company, still look at who you're competing against. So an independent group of four or five or six surgeons or an ASC and doing 300 cases a month, their adversary is
00:21:17
Speaker
Optum, Blue Cross Blue Shield, Cigna, multi-billion dollar, extremely sophisticated companies with data scientists left and right. There's just no way that you can line up. So like I said, it's David versus Goliath and David has a low winning percentage over the history of time. So David's do I should say. So it's a, it's really difficult. And so you've got to try your best to find ways to level up playing field from an information standpoint.
00:21:44
Speaker
Got it. Final question for you, Nader. We do this each episode with our guests. What's one thing our listeners can do this week to improve their surgery centers? So I am a big and I've had the unfortunate experience of like, I believe my entire family spends most of their time at
00:22:01
Speaker
orthopedic ASCs or having surgeries performed or at physical therapy afterwards. And we're in Charlotte, so we fund Ortho Carolina annually and great group. But what I would say is.
00:22:15
Speaker
really focusing on the patient experience. I think healthcare in general tries to, but still gets very transactional in its nature. And so I think, again, I mentioned hospitality in terms of a board member. I think it's a really interesting approach. I think it's not hard to differentiate.
00:22:35
Speaker
yourself in a world where things are so transactional in nature and finding experiential things that don't necessarily cost a ton, but that you're really being thoughtful about from the time that patient makes the decision at the surgical practice to come to your ASC, how does every point of contact from that point forward handled?
00:22:59
Speaker
including on the back end through the entire billing process too, is it all handled well so at the end that they're feeling and having a great experience. I've had a great clinical experience where then the patient follow up, they got denial because they didn't get pre-auth. They didn't do the pre-auth process correctly and started sending me $40,000 bills. And, you know, I said, you're probably sending it to the wrong person because this is not my issue and it's not going to be my issue. But they kept sending it and eventually it got solved, but it took a year and a half and that created annoyance and nuisance and
00:23:29
Speaker
You don't want to create some stress for people getting $40,000 bills that they don't want to have and aren't necessary. And I'm lucky enough that I happen to know this business, but imagine if you didn't. So you could have had a great surgical experience and you have a bad experience in the back end, or you could have not had great point of contact. Some of that software too, really wonderful software experience.
00:23:48
Speaker
It's easy for people to maneuver and get through the system. I almost take a little bit of a spa or hospitality approach, too, and maybe flip yourself around. Have one of your surgeons go pretend to be a patient through the process. What is that experience for them and is it what they would want to have? I think that's lost a lot in this industry. Love it. That's a good perspective. Naira, thanks so much for joining us here today. Appreciate it. My pleasure. Thanks for having me, Nick.
00:24:19
Speaker
As always, it has been a busy week in healthcare, so let's jump right in.
00:24:23
Speaker
Healthcare Tech Outlook is sharing tips to help make your operating rooms more sustainable. According to the article, ORs are the primary generator of energy and waste and can consume up to six times the energy and more than half the waste as the rest of your facility does. The article stated that there are five main strategies to focus on and they go in this order, refuse, reduce, reuse, repurpose, and then recycle.
00:24:53
Speaker
And then here are the eight tips to help get you started. These are in no particular order. Focus on proper waste disposal, implement recycling programs, turn off equipment and lights overnight, reduce the frequency, which non-contaminated equipment is cleaned. Don't use prepackaged sets of gowns, gloves, and instruments as they can lead to added waste. Introduce a low flow anesthesia machines and LED lighting systems.
00:25:23
Speaker
switch to reusable linens and instruments, and lastly, develop a committee at your facility focused on introducing more green practices to reduce your carbon footprint. Now, of course, sterilization and patient safety is
00:25:38
Speaker
of utmost importance and that comes first. So you'll want to implement some of these suggestions after thoroughly doing your research. But by doing so, you might be able to make a really big impact on your OR's contribution to unnecessary waste and greenhouse gas emissions. In our second news story, there is a new price transparency bill in town called the Lower Costs, More Transparency Act.
00:26:05
Speaker
On December 11th, 2023, the US House of Representatives overwhelmingly passed the act by a vote of 320 to 71. If enacted, effective January 1st, 2026, ASCs will have to do the following. Now, this is just a quick summary from ASCA. I'll put all the links so you could read all the nitty-gritty details.
00:26:29
Speaker
ASCs will be responsible for publicly disclosing all standard charges for all items and services they offer in a way that is free and accessible without subscription. ASCs must also disclose their prices for a minimum of 300 shoppable services, including all CMS-specified shoppable services. They provide an additional ASC-selected shoppable services to reach the 300 minimum.
00:26:57
Speaker
And then for each service, you must share a plain language description, gross charge, discounted cash price or median cash price, and current payer-specific negotiated charges with the name of the third-party payer and plan and dollar amount for each item in service. For CMS-specified shoppable services not offered, ASCs must clearly indicate that they do not provide them.
00:27:23
Speaker
And then lastly, this legislation will allow CMS to issue penalties of $300 per day for noncompliance. So the argument for this is, of course, increased transparency and pricing and the ability to empower patients to make informed decisions about their care. ASCA, however,
00:27:43
Speaker
remains concerned that the ASC specific provision will not provide useful information to patients at the end of the day. So next, the bill will move to the Senate for consideration, but as far as I can tell, there is no date set for when they will vote.
00:27:59
Speaker
The moral of the story, though, is between the No Surprises Act, the Healthcare Price Transparency Act, and now this one, the Lower Cost More Transparency Act, please just get ahead of this. Whether it's this act or another one, this is the direction the industry is headed. If you do not have a simple way to lay out how much your procedure costs, there is software out there that will be tremendously helpful in this area.
00:28:25
Speaker
So start doing your research and get the ball rolling as soon as you can. All right, let's switch gears. Outpatient Surgery Magazine published their latest trend to watch, posing the question, is EHR adoption critical for ASCs? So the jury is still out on exactly how many ASCs have EHRs right now, but estimates suggest that somewhere between 20% to 50% of freestanding surgery centers have made the switch.
00:28:55
Speaker
pretty broad range, but helpful context nonetheless. So they interviewed three people to help answer that question, is EHR adoption critical? And here were their responses. Janice Kelly, president of AORN Syntegrity, was the first person they talked to and her simple answer was yes, EHR adoption is critical. And here are the six quick reasons why. You will improve patient care, save clinician time,
00:29:24
Speaker
meet regulatory and accreditation requirements. Your patient information can be shared, which will help guide safer, more coordinated, and more cost-effective care. You will reduce the risk of prescribing the wrong treatment or medication. And lastly, you'll be able to automatically flag potential drug interactions, which will increase patient safety.
00:29:45
Speaker
Bill Willis, who is the director at Vance Thompson Vision, agreed that the answer is also yes, as he recently made the switch in 2021 to an EHR. And his four reasons are circulating RNs now spend less time documenting than they did with the paper system. There has been cost savings as less money and time is spent on updating, printing, storing, and scanning paper charts.
00:30:12
Speaker
The surgeons have saved a ton of time with the electronic signature functionality. And lastly, their anesthesia team no longer has the burden of dealing with paperwork. The third person they interviewed was Maura Cash, who happens to be HST's vice president of clinical strategies. And as you can imagine, she too agrees that EHR adoption is critical. And her three reasons being
00:30:38
Speaker
Your ASC will immediately become more appealing during the staff recruitment process, which is huge. Managing big data, meaning CMS data submissions, other registries, or also tracking in-house trends is only achievable through the use of EHRs. And lastly, the ROI is worth it. Paper and storage prices continue to rise, and these costs are compounded by increasing salary costs of staff who
00:31:05
Speaker
do nothing but manage paper records for most of the time. Now, I briefly summarized this article, but there's so much in there, including educational resources, implementation considerations, how to find the right EHR for you, and so much more. So as always, we'll put a link in the episode notes so you can easily do your own research too.
00:31:26
Speaker
And to end our new segment on a positive note, Leanne Sondrup is an emergency nurse at Valley Wise Health in Phoenix, Arizona. She was driving home from a night shift when she saw a terrible accident on the highway. It was a cement truck on the other side of the freeway lying against a retaining wall and EMS was not there yet. So she knew it had just happened. So Leanne parked her car.
00:31:54
Speaker
and then crossed two lanes of highway traffic, crawled to under the cab and found the driver who was in really scary shape.
00:32:02
Speaker
but was alert and able to talk to her. She created two tourniquets from belts and was trying to keep the driver talking and positive, all while also talking to 911 on the phone and also calling her manager to let them know, to kind of brief them on the case that was coming their way. So finally, EMS arrives and the man was transported to a hospital where they were able to get him stable. And of course, the EMS credited Leanne with saving his life.
00:32:30
Speaker
Now, you have to read this full article. Just the series of events that had to take place for Leanne to be in the right place and for the truck driver to have survived was nothing short of a miracle. But I warn you, I was weeping reading this story. So just a heads up, it's a tearjerker, but it's such a beautiful story about what happens when you do the right thing, even if it's difficult in the moment. So amazing job, Leanne, and I'm so glad everyone's okay.
00:32:59
Speaker
And that news story officially wraps up this week's podcast. Thank you as always for spending a few minutes of your week with us. Make sure to subscribe or leave a review on whichever platform you're listening from. I hope you have a great day and we will see you again soon.