While many ASCs rely on analytics platforms embedded in their EMRs or materials management systems, Germantown, Md.-based Capital Surgical Solutions decided to take a different route: building a custom analytics tool from scratch.
Benjamin Stein, MD, an independent orthopedic surgeon and co-founder of Capital Surgical Solutions, told Becker’s the decision stemmed from a widespread issue he observed across ASC models — analytics tools often provide insights that are inaccessible or too opaque for the surgeons who actually generate the costs.
“The data is black-boxed to the surgeon utilizers,” Dr. Stein said. “It’s not presented in a manner they can digest and potentially modify behaviors or selectivity on what they’re utilizing.”
The ASC launched its development effort 18 months ago, with the last year spent actively building and refining the tool. It has been in meaningful use for the past nine months.
“We wanted to target the data to a specific surgeon user, drill down on a case-specific level and allow comparison,” Dr. Stein said.
The goal was to enable behavioral change around cost and resource use, driven by clear, digestible data. To address this, Capital Surgical Solutions created its own tech team within the ASC’s management company. This internal team focused on building a user interface that would be functional for everyone — from surgeons and OR staff to the business office.
Building the tool internally wasn’t without hurdles. The biggest challenge was achieving broad buy-in across the ASC to ensure consistency.
“The biggest obstacles have been obtaining buy-in by all members of the facility to ensure that data is clean — because that has to be organized and maintained in a manner that’s predictable and consistent,” he said. “Otherwise, you’re analyzing garbage.”
Nine months into deployment, the analytics platform has become central to the ASC’s operations.
“What we’re trying to do differentially in analytics is have truly facility-specific, clean data across the board,” he said, “engagement of both the non-clinical and clinical staff and applicable surgeons on reviewing the analytics that we yield out of this tool, to adopt behavioral change with respect to waste and comparable product utilization that is more cost-effective and value-oriented.”
The post Inside the ASC that built its own analytics tool appeared first on Becker’s ASC.
