Economy, surgery, and salaries — Oh, my!
By Stephen W. Earnhart, MS
CEO
Earnhart & Associates
Austin, TX
When people lose their jobs, they often lose their health benefits as well. Since the majority of surgery is outpatient, and the bulk of that outpatient surgery is elective or can be delayed, it is not surprising that surgery in some areas is significantly down. Here are some of my ideas to cut personnel costs:
- Cut hours, not people. More than ever, your staff need their jobs. Reducing your hours of operations can save many staff members. This can spread the loss over all of your staff instead of letting individuals go.
- Reduce days of service. It is better to close your schedule to elective cases on one day and have a full rest of the week than it is to having staff sitting around for long times between cases.
- Encourage staff to take one or two vacation days per month off until conditions improve, and they will improve!
- Obviously, do not fill open positions.
- Try to supplement other areas of the hospital, surgery center, or physician practices that do not have service reduction issues. A nurse is a nurse and can work anywhere! Techs and front staff people have skills they can apply to other parts of health care. Encourage your surgeons to consider them to fill in gaps or opportunities in their practices.
- Look for areas within your department that you can replace your surgical staff with, such as housekeeping. I cleaned out dog cages for years, and it didn't hurt me! While they might not be the most glorious positions, it keeps the cash flowing.
- Sending staff members to surgeon's offices to tout your services. This is a good way to convince your boss the value of keeping your people together.
- Talk to your surgeons! Let them know what is going on, and encourage them to bring cases from other facilities to yours. Uh-oh. Maybe someone at those "other facilities" might be asking their docs to do the same thing right now!
- Ask for volunteers to take a leave of absence. We all hate those people that are always saying, "I don't really need to work, you know." Put them on the spot and out the door.
- If you absolutely, categorically, have no choice and have to let staff go, do it by seniority: Last in, first out. It isn't fair, but what is?
- (Editor's note: Earnhart & Associates is an ambulatory surgery consulting firm specializing in all aspects of outpatient surgery development and management.)
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