As the demand for anesthesia grows alongside the migration of procedures to the outpatient setting, anesthesia leaders are getting creative in the ways they meet the shifting demands of the industry.
Scott Mayer, CEO of Rosemont, Ill.-based Ambulatory Anesthesia Associates, recently joined Becker’s to discuss how his organization’s experience in the office-based procedure space is helping it enhance anesthesia care at ASCs.
While ASC leaders hold mixed perspectives on office-based procedures, Mr. Mayer told Becker’s that in his experience, there is ample room for collaboration between ASCs and physician offices on patient safety, operational efficiency and care quality.
“The ASC is a mainstay and a must for the healthcare industry,” he said. “[Especially with] how it’s been able to do so many surgeries on a more cost-effective basis, and also with a higher [level of] quality. In many cases, they are getting more and more higher acuity procedures and sicker patients into their surgery centers, and those smaller procedures and those healthier patients have to go somewhere to be seen.”
He said anesthesia can play a key role in fostering fruitful collaborations between physician offices and ASCs by spearheading “holistic” and comprehensive procedure planning.
“For us in the surgery center, it’s really about how we all look at our site of service, our place of treatment, our environment to make sure it matches up with the procedure type and the patient,” he said.
By emphasizing well-coordinated planning with engaged anesthesia providers, ASCs may be able to more effectively determine patients who are candidates for a collaborating physician office.
“We want to show and demonstrate that there is a very high quality and patient-safety-driven model for office-based procedures and surgeries,” Mr. Mayer said. “Many of the sites we service could be mistaken for surgery centers. They just don’t have a certificate of need.”
As the landscape of anesthesia continues to shift and emerging technologies expand the industry’s horizons, Mr. Mayer and AAC view this moment in anesthesia as a major opportunity for growth and enhanced patient care.
“We’ve built patient engagement and communication tools that start the patient journey prior to the procedure,” he said. This includes providing instructions, collecting health information before the procedure and even holding pre-op billing consultations to ensure the patient is prepared for every aspect of the procedure.
“It’s a holistic journey all the way to post-procedure, in recovery, the follow-up and call back after the procedure a couple days later, reaching out through text engagement and electronic communication to follow up on satisfaction scores and what areas can be improved.”
Mr. Mayer added this highly engaged and comprehensive approach to anesthesia care will be essential for outpatient care moving forward.
“It’s a huge opportunity for anesthesia in this environment, because the customer service and really personable nature is necessary in this setting,” he said. “I think that you really need to make sure that you are reinventing yourself. We actually go through a pretty substantial orientation process with our anesthesia providers and our doctors to just make sure that they understand the nuances and differences if they’re coming out of the hospital.”
Above all, Mr. Mayer emphasized that the future success of ASCs, physician offices and anesthesia providers will require a willingness to re-imagine the range and approach of their services.
“This is not the past; it’s a new world that we’re living in today not just from an anesthesia perspective, but the entire industry and marketplace,” he said. “So can we have a new conversation? Can we reset the bar, the expectations and how we can work together? I think it’s the optimal time to have a true partnership, relationship and connection with your surgeons and with your facility administrators, because that’s the only way to really optimize this. And if you do the work, the upside of potential is there.”
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