Do you feel threatened by office-based surgeries?
Here are strategies for hospitals and surgery centers
Are the physician offices in your area taking your best-paying procedures? You’re not alone. Here are some strategies from your peers:
-Decrease your facility fee for certain procedures.
One Columbia freestanding surgery center for plastic procedures decided to lower its fees, says Larry Hornsby, CRNA. Hornsby is president of the American Association of Nurse Anesthetists and vice president of Anesthesia Resources Management in Birmingham, AL, which employs both certified registered nurse anesthesists and anesthesiologists and handles more than 3,000 surgical cases in office settings each year.
"While they never said, We’re doing this to compete with the loss of business to offices,’ I would think we saw the reduction in cost purely based on market competition," Hornsby says.
- Offer a cost-effective package price for your physicians.
Walter L. Erhardt, MD, president-elect of the American Society of Plastic Surgeons in Arlington Heights, IL, is a solo physician in Albany, GA. He has continued to perform his plastic surgeries at Phoebe Putney Memorial Hospital because of the cost-effective package price he can offer his patients. "It comes out to be a triple win," Erhardt says. "I think it’s good for the patient; it’s good for me; and it’s good for the hospital."
In comparison, some hospitals treat plastic surgery as a cost-shifting point to cover some of their losses in other areas, he says. "I think that’s a shortsighted approach. That drives physicians to an in-office facility."
Physicians often appreciate the opportunity to do surgery at the hospital and avoid the increased overhead, increased staffing, and requirements of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration.
"There’s a lot of headaches associated with having an in-office facility," Erhardt says. "It almost costs you to have that facility. You’re lucky if you break even." Hospitals with cost-effective price packaging for plastic surgery open up another revenue source, he says. "It’s upfront cash."
- Create a center of excellence.
Plastic surgery is another product line that hospitals can offer, Erhardt says. "It fits nicely with women’s programs and fitness programs."
Erhardt is working with his local hospital to establish a center of excellence for plastic surgery. "The support, the access to new technology, and if the hospital has a vision, the cost-effectiveness of the large entity can be assets to the patient," he says.
- Consider assisting physicians in setting up their practices.
When physicians notify hospitals that they’re setting up office-based surgery practices, some hospitals will go as far as to assist physicians in that transition, says Marc E. Koch, MD, president and CEO of Resource Anesthesiology Associates, an anesthesiology practice, and physician director of the OR in St. Claire’s Hospital in New York City.
Some New York City hospitals have helped physician offices become accredited and help them set up the equipment and other items needed for their practice to perform surgery, Koch says. The reason? Breed good will, "so they keep some of the cases at the hospital."
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