As ASCs continue to battle declining reimbursement rates and high operational costs, many ASC leaders are looking to increase patient volumes and add ancillary services to relieve their bottom lines.
During the session “Big Ideas to Grow Patient Volume Without Breaking the Bank” at the 22nd Annual Spine, Orthopedic and Pain Management-Driven ASC + The Future of Spine Conference in Chicago, several ASC leaders discussed their methods for increasing patient volume in ways that are financially sustainable while maintaining high-quality care.
Referrals are a key component of patient volume—and expanding them often requires an analytical and multi-pronged approach.
“What we’re also trying to do is capture more ancillary volume and referral volume and make sure that our physicians are referring [within] the system,” said Allison Roditi, vice president of the musculoskeletal service line at Buffalo, N.Y.-based Catholic Health. She said that her system’s approach to increasing patient volume is analytical in nature. “Where are we sending patients? How do we find out what our gaps are? If patients aren’t going to our physical therapy locations, how can we help them understand they should go there and have the doctors understand that this is a great place for them. [We’re] looking at those referral patterns and where patients will go for certain services. If we don’t have a service, do we need to add it, or do we need to partner with local community places that do provide that service but are loyal to our health system?”
In competitive markets, like New York, ASCs may feel extra pressure to capture patients from other systems — but this isn’t always necessary.
“Sometimes getting the patients is not as hard as you would think. We have an incredible system where you feel like you are the only person they’re taking care of and a lot of the large health systems can’t really accomplish that,” Ms. Roditi said. “And once somebody comes into our system and gets to experience that they stay, they don’t go back to the other systems.”
Joseph Lamplot, MD, an orthopedic surgeon and director of sports medicine research at Chicago-based Endeavor Health, said that his system has seen significant benefits to their patient volumes from employing referral coordinators.
“You can’t expect all these patients to take their Epic printout on their discharge paperwork and call the number,” he said. “We saw that only about 25% to 30% of patients were making those calls. With a referral coordinator following [up] on those patients that did not make the calls within 24 to 48 hours, we improved our conversation rate of referrals to 62%.”
Ms. Roditi added that while hiring referral coordinators may present an added cost, the benefits of having dedicated staff to follow up with patients within the first 48 hours of referral pays out nearly tenfold.
“If you spend X amount of dollars on this person’s salary, it’s going to gain you 10 times more because you’re going to get 10 patients in the door,” she said. “And in the surgical world, that may mean two to three surgeries which will pay for that person right there, especially in the world of spine and orthopedics.”
ASCs should also turn their attention towards communication platforms that actually resonate with patients — which is often text messages and portal messages as opposed to emails and phone calls.
“Text messages, portal messages, [have a] way higher response rate because people don’t want to be on the phone, they want to text, they want to do things that are relatively automated,” Dr. Lamplot added. “So that’s even further improved our capture rate with referrals, just eliminating the phone calls and minimizing the call centers.”
“Old school methods,” like coordinating in-person meetings between referring physicians, has also proven an effective method for closing referral gaps in an increasingly digital world, Ms. Roditi said.
“When I started as an administrator, we brought doctors to other practices to meet doctors and shake hands — and we’re going back to that,” she said. “It’s sometimes costing us coffee — maybe dinner — if we bring a large group together. But shaking hands and exchanging cards, that’s where you get your referrals and your capture because then they have each other’s cellphones. It’s not going through an office manager or a phone tree or waiting on hold. It’s about going back to that interpersonal connection and being a little bit old school about it.”
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