This Week in Surgery Centers

Today is part 2 of our 3-part series about how you can capitalize on the cardiology boom. Last week, we talked with Kristen Richards about key considerations to think through before adding CV procedures to your ASC. Today, we’ll sit down with Kristin Truesdell, the Senior Vice President at Corazon, to cover all things money. We’ll get into what expenses you’ll encounter, how to negotiate with payo...

Today kicks off our three-week series about capitalizing on the cardiology boom! Kristen Richards is the VP of Cardiovascular Operations at Atlas Healthcare Partners, and she will be our first guest in the series. We had a great discussion about what ASCs need to consider if they’re thinking about adding cardio cases. Preparing your infrastructure and staff has some ‘gotchas’ you do not want to ov...

Amy Ishmael is currently a senior product manager at HST Pathways, but prior to joining HST, Amy was a GI lab tech for years and a surgery scheduler at an ASC that saw 450 cases/month. She is no stranger to the topic we’re covering today, which is how you can maximize OR utilization through block time optimization. In HST’s State of the Industry report, we shared that, on average, 42% of block tim...

Enhancing OR utilization is crucial for boosting your ASC’s financial performance, but knowing where to start can be challenging. In today's episode, Janet Carlson, the Executive Director of ASCs at Commonwealth Pain & Spine, shares six actionable tips to help you book more cases at your surgery center efficiently. Janet's strategies focus on preventing staff burnout and ensuring physician sat...

Our guest this week is Alex Taira. Alex is the Regulatory Affairs and Research Manager at ASCA, and he's on to give us all an update on the impact of the FTC's latest ban on noncompete agreements. Since the ruling was announced, everyone has been trying to determine how this will impact surgery centers and the healthcare landscape as a whole, so Alex sheds some light on the basics of the...

Alex Yampolsky is the CEO of MedServe, and he will join us this week to share insights into how you can stop drug diversion at your ASC. Drug diversion is not a topic we’ve covered yet, and I think the work Alex and his team are doing is super important. I’m excited for everyone to hear our conversation and hopefully implement some of Alex’s advice. We cover the most vulnerable areas in an ASC, to...

Tina Piotrowski is the CEO of Copper Ridge Surgery Center. A few weeks ago, at ASCA, Tina joined HST’s session as a panelist alongside Dr. David Shapiro and Nick Latz to discuss How to Prepare for and Navigate Board-Level Conversations. The session was very well received, so much so that we had a bunch of questions that we couldn’t get to because we ran out of time. Tina has been gracious enough t...

Kate Perlstrom is the Director of Surgical Services at Providence Mission Surgery Center, and she’s on today to share her essential guide to board meeting agendas. This will be the second episode focused on making your board meetings as effective as possible, and having a repeatable agenda is critical to doing so. Kate shares her 9-part agenda, tips for holding successful meetings, and common mist...

For the month of April, we will focus our guest discussions on quarterly board meetings. Benita Tapia is the Administrator and Director of Nursing at 90210 Surgery Medical Center in Beverly Hills, CA, and she joins us for our first episode of the series to talk about how you can simplify your quarterly board meetings by meeting with your financial committee a week in advance. Benita oversees four...

Monica Daniel is the Principal & Founder of Axiom Integrated Services and has been consulting and helping ASCs for over 25 years. Over the last few years, Monica has seen an increase in interest and the development of OBLs (office-based labs) and that’s what we’re diving into today. We’re covering the differences between an ASC, an OBL, and a hybrid facility, the key factors to consider when c...

At the end of every podcast episode, we always ask our guests, “What is one thing our listeners can do this week to improve their surgery centers?” For this week’s episode, we compiled the most recent responses we’ve had, bringing together the best advice from seven different ASC leaders. We hope everyone enjoys this round-up of practical, innovative ideas. A huge thank you to our featured guests,...

Scott Bacon is the Vice President of Business Development at Compass Surgical Partners, and he’s here to cover how you can successfully convert an HOPD into an ASC. The switch has many benefits, such as market growth, reimbursement differences, physician retention, and high-acuity case migration. Scott will also share how to get started, what pitfalls to avoid, and how to evaluate whether a conver...

One of our favorite returning guests, Maura Cash, is here today to talk about OAS-CAHPS. There is a ton of OAS-CAHPS coverage right now across the industry, given the 2025 mandated deadline, but we'll cover a new angle with Maura: how you can proactively improve your scores before they become public by properly training your staff. After my conversation with Maura, we'll switch to our Data & I...

John Brock is the Co-Founder, President, and COO of SurgNet Health Partners, and he joins us this week to talk through The Blueprint for Building an ASC Management Group. John takes us through the whole process, starting with market analysis and securing funding, all the way through operating at peak efficiency, managing metrics, and emerging trends to consider. In our news recap, we’ll cover the...

David Thawley is the CEO of HST Pathways, and he is on the podcast today to talk about the idea of proactive operations, detailing how, by building a culture of proactive operations, your surgery center will be able to thrive in this new world for ASCs. Running a surgery center is different from what it was ten years ago or even five years ago, so pivoting to efficient, data-driven, proactive oper...

In this episode, we will dive into nine noteworthy news stories that have been making waves in the ever-evolving surgery center industry. We’ll bounce between industry trends, clinical trends, articles looking back at 2023, and articles looking ahead to what 2024 will bring. Here’s what we’ll cover: Ozempic could be good for orthopedic surgeons Medicare Introduces New ASC Procedure Request Process...

Running a surgery center is extremely challenging, and one element that adds to the challenge is collecting, aggregating, and reporting on quality measures. While there are many measures to stay on top of, Kathy Wilson, the Executive Director at the ASC Quality Collaboration, is on today to talk about the measure “Wrong Site, Wrong Side, Wrong Patient, Wrong Procedure, Wrong Implant.” A few weeks...

Marsha Diamond is the Director of Coding Solutions at Aideo Technologies, and we had the opportunity to talk with her about how AI can be used to reduce payor denials. There is a ton of AI talk going on, and it can feel overwhelming trying to understand what it is and how it can be woven into our lives, but Marsha did a great job breaking it down for us. We covered how AI can be used to avoid the...

BJ DiMartini is the CEO of Excel Health, and he has been working hard to open new surgery centers in Hawaii and Washington. But BJ and his team are doing things a little differently – they are building their facilities with a true concierge approach and leaning into the growing trend around medical tourism. BJ shared the specialties they will offer, how he’s sourcing physicians and attracting pati...

At the end of every podcast episode, we always ask our guests, "What is one thing our listeners can do this week to improve their surgery centers?" For this week’s episode, we compiled the most recent responses we’ve had, bringing together the best advice from 11 different ASC leaders. We hope everyone enjoys this round-up of practical, innovative ideas. A huge thank you to our featured guests, in...

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 bu...

Hilary Sondik is the Executive Vice President of Operations at Surgical Notes, and today we are doing a deep dive into the key revenue cycle management (RCM) reports that every ASC should be tracking in 2024. We’ll break it down by frequency, so we’ll lay out what reports you should be running daily, weekly, monthly, and annually, and then Hilary will spend some time sharing the positive impacts y...

Kara Newbury is the Director of Government Affairs and Regulatory Counsel at ASCA, and we had the chance to chat with her about CMS’ recently released 2024 Final Payment Rule. We covered reimbursement rates, updates to the ASC Covered Procedures List, quality reporting changes, OAS-CAHPS, and other essential details all ASCs should know. In our news recap, we’ll cover five moves that shook up the...

Joan Dentler is the Founder of Avanza Healthcare Strategies, and she joins our host, Nick Latz, this week to dive into their 5th Annual Hospital Leadership ASC Survey. Nick and Joan discuss the survey results, including key conclusions and trends around ASC ownership, hospitals and health systems’ growing interest in ASCs, what equity breakouts look like, where third-party management companies com...

Mike Tompkins is a Client Services Manager at in2itive, and we had a chance to talk through the intricate world of payment posting in ASCs, mainly focusing on commercial payers. If this is still a manual process for you and you are spending time reconciling payments on the backend of your billing system, then you’ll learn a lot in this episode about how automating those processes can improve the a...