Driving Efficiency in Outpatient Surgery with LeanTaaS

Summary

Becker’s Healthcare Podcast: Driving Efficiency in Outpatient Surgery with LeanTaaS

Release Date: August 15, 2025

Introduction

In this insightful episode of the Becker’s Healthcare Podcast, host Scott Becker engages in a compelling conversation with Dr. Ashvin Dhawan, a distinguished orthopedic surgeon and advisor to LeanTaaS. The discussion delves into the transformative role of innovation, particularly artificial intelligence (AI) and automation, in enhancing efficiency and access within outpatient surgical care. Dr. Dhawan shares his extensive experience and sheds light on the operational challenges faced by surgical clinics, offering valuable solutions to drive sustainable growth and improve patient outcomes.

Guest Background

Dr. Ashvin Dhawan brings a wealth of expertise to the conversation. He is a fellowship-trained, board-certified orthopedic surgeon practicing at Houston Methodist in Texas. With a clinical focus spanning over 16 years on complex knee and shoulder issues, Dr. Dhawan has also made significant contributions to the field by aiding other practices in optimizing surgical efficiency. His academic credentials include a medical degree from Baylor and a residency at Johns Hopkins, complementing his role as an advisor to LeanTaaS.

Current Challenges in Outpatient Surgery

Dr. Dhawan highlights the shifting landscape of outpatient surgeries, emphasizing the increasing complexity of procedures being moved to ambulatory settings. He identifies several operational pain points that surgical clinics currently face:

1. Complex Processes and Increased Responsibilities: The transition to outpatient settings places more responsibility on clinics for patient preparation, including authorization, clearance, and education. These processes have become "increasingly more onerous and error-prone" ([02:10] Dr. Dhawan).

2. Scalability Issues Due to Tribal Knowledge: Surgeons often develop personalized workflows and preferences, leading to "tribal knowledge" that is not easily scalable as practices grow and surgeries become more complex ([02:10] Dr. Dhawan).

3. Staff Burnout and Lack of Collaboration: Staff members are experiencing burnout due to entrenched silos, making collaboration difficult and leaving administrators feeling like they are "flying blind" and constantly "putting out fires" ([02:10] Dr. Dhawan).

4. Inadequate Tools for Case Management: Existing tools, primarily designed for storing medical records, fall short in effectively managing the surgical pipeline from consultation to the actual procedure. Dr. Dhawan likens current systems to "giving a digital artist, Microsoft Paint to do their job"—insufficient for the demands of modern outpatient surgery ([02:10] Dr. Dhawan).

The Role of AI and Automation in Enhancing Efficiency

When discussing innovation, Dr. Dhawan emphasizes the importance of "doing things smarter" rather than merely doing more. He outlines how AI and automation can significantly improve workflows in orthopedic practices:

1. Effortless Communication and Workflow Management: Leveraging technology to allow surgeons to communicate complex preoperative and postoperative needs effortlessly, reducing dependency on specialized staff ([04:49] Dr. Dhawan).

2. Elimination of Mundane Administrative Tasks: Automation minimizes manual errors and supports consistent, high-touch service by handling repetitive administrative duties, thereby decompressing overwhelmed staff ([04:49] Dr. Dhawan).

3. Personalized Patient Management at Scale: Technology enables personalized patient engagement, ensuring patients stay on track with clearances and preparations without overburdening the staff ([04:49] Dr. Dhawan).

4. Data-Driven Case Pipeline and KPI Tracking: Creating digital surgical pipelines allows administrative teams to track key performance indicators (KPIs) and manage productivity effectively. This approach supports scalability and preserves surgeon autonomy by implementing best practices tailored to specific workflows ([04:49] Dr. Dhawan).

Dr. Dhawan asserts, “Nobody has the bandwidth to chase down the phone calls anymore… Leverage the technology to manage these patients at scale in a very personalized way” ([04:49]).

Dr. Dhawan’s Collaboration with LeanTaaS

Dr. Dhawan shares his journey with LeanTaaS, highlighting how his initial success in his own practice inspired him to collaborate with the company to extend these benefits to other surgeons and practices:

• Organic Growth and Partner Recognition: After implementing LeanTaaS tools, Dr. Dhawan observed increased surgical volume, reduced staff burden, and higher patient satisfaction. His colleagues noticed these improvements and inquired about his methods, leading to his deeper involvement with LeanTaaS ([07:37] Dr. Dhawan).

• Unified Vision for Integrated Surgical Management: Together with LeanTaaS, Dr. Dhawan aims to create a seamless digital ecosystem that manages surgeries end-to-end, from patient consultation to the procedure, ensuring that supply meets demand through sophisticated algorithms ([07:37] Dr. Dhawan).

Future of Surgical Care and Outpatient Surgery

Looking ahead, Dr. Dhawan envisions a future where AI and automation significantly enhance access, care quality, and sustainability in outpatient surgical care:

1. Integrated Digital Ecosystem: A seamless match between supply and demand, akin to an “open table reservation,” where real-time availability of surgical procedures is transparent to both clinicians and patients ([09:23] Dr. Dhawan).

2. Personalized Patient Journeys: Patients receive a clear, step-by-step guide tailored to their surgical journey, ensuring they are well-prepared and supported throughout the process ([09:23] Dr. Dhawan).

3. Reliable and Efficient Staff Utilization: Automated systems handle routine tasks, allowing staff to focus on delivering high-quality care rather than being overwhelmed by administrative duties ([09:23] Dr. Dhawan).

4. Increased Access to Care: By removing obstacles and streamlining processes, AI and automation tools expand access to surgical care, addressing current shortages and enhancing overall patient outcomes ([09:23] Dr. Dhawan).

Dr. Dhawan emphasizes, “There's such a shortage of access to care right now that these tools are only going to increase that access, increase the ability for us to deliver this care” ([09:23]).

Real-World Impact of LeanTaaS Tools

Dr. Dhawan provides a concrete example of how LeanTaaS tools have transformed a surgical practice:

• Reduction in Reschedule Rates: By implementing LeanTaaS’s digital surgical pipeline, a practice identified a high reschedule rate due to patients’ financial literacy issues. Through an automated workflow that educated patients on financing options immediately after their consultation, the practice achieved an almost 50% reduction in reschedule rates within a week ([11:06] Dr. Dhawan).

This example underscores the power of data-driven processes in uncovering inefficiencies and enabling practices to implement effective solutions rapidly ([12:43] Dr. Dhawan).

Final Thoughts and Conclusion

Dr. Dhawan concludes by urging his peers to embrace data-driven practices and automation to unlock efficiencies and improve patient care:

• Measure to Improve: “If you don't measure it, you can't fix it” ([12:55] Dr. Dhawan). He advocates for monitoring every aspect of the patient journey to identify and address inefficiencies.

• Empower Teams Through Automation: Automating repetitive tasks allows healthcare teams to focus on delivering exceptional care rather than being bogged down by administrative burdens.

• Foster Accountability and Transparency: Implementing systems that track and report key metrics promotes accountability and uncovers opportunities for collaboration and improvement ([12:55] Dr. Dhawan).

Dr. Dhawan’s message is clear: leveraging AI and automation technologies is essential for the sustainable growth of outpatient surgical practices, enhancing both operational efficiency and patient satisfaction.

Closing Remarks

Scott Becker wraps up the episode by acknowledging Dr. Dhawan’s remarkable career and the impactful work he’s doing with LeanTaaS. The conversation highlights the crucial intersection of clinical expertise and technological innovation in shaping the future of outpatient surgery.

Thank you for tuning into this episode of the Becker’s Healthcare Podcast. Stay informed and inspired as we continue to explore the driving forces behind U.S. healthcare.

Transcript

[Scott Becker]

This is Scott Becker with the Becker's Healthcare podcast. We're thrilled today to visit with a brilliant surgeon and orthopedic surgeon. We're going to talk about the future of outpatient surgical care and the role of innovation in driving efficiency and access in outpatient surgery. We're joined today by Dr. Ashvin Dhawan. Dr. Dhawan is an orthopedic surgeon. He's an advisor to Lean Toss. He's brilliantly trained. He did a residency at Johns Hopkins, did his medical degree at Baylor. Also a Rice graduate. Just a brilliant, brilliant person. He's also served as team physician and assistant team physicians for some of the greatest franchises in professional sports. So just great to visit with Dr. Juan today. Dr. Juan, could you take a moment and introduce yourself and tell us a bit about yourself and your background?

[Dr. Ashvin Dhawan]

I think Scott, honor and pleasure to be on your podcast. Always enjoying hearing the different insights and tidbits that Beckers offers. So yeah, I'm a fellowship trained board certified orthopedic surgeon. I work practice out of Houston Methodist down in Houston, Texas. And for the last 16 years my clinical focus has been complex knee and shoulder issues. Everything from the cradle to the grave relating to knee and shoulder surgery. But the other hat I also wear is I'm very passionate about helping other fellow practices drive surgical efficiency throughput and delivering it with the best possible patient staff experience. And that's what led me to my role here working with product called IQ for Surgical Clinics with leantas, which is now where I spend a lot of time consulting.

[Scott Becker]

Thank you so much. Talk about you got outpatient surgeries evolving fast. More complexity, shifting to ambulatory settings, more total joints, more complex surgeries in the spine are more complex surgeries, complex spine surgeries. From your vantage point, what are some of the key operational pain points that surgical clinics and surgery centers are grappling with currently? What do you see some of the challenges that great orthopedic practices are struggling with or trying to work through?

[Dr. Ashvin Dhawan]

Yeah, I think you hit on some important points here. More and more surgery is shifting to the outpatient. We're seeing it in the spine world. It's already happened in the joints, the reconstruction world. We're seeing more and more responsibility being placed on the clinics and ownership to ensure that these patients get adequately prepared on the launchpad. And the processes involving authorization, clearance, patient education have gotten only increasingly more onerous and error prone as time has gone on. More hoops to jump through, if you will, to make sure that these cases can get safely and securely to the Finish line. And in order to get these patients there over a period of time, what's happened is over the years, surgeons have gotten more and more attached to their staff. They learn their preferences, they understand their nuances and how cases need to get prepared for the actual surgical event. But the consequence of this is they've grown this tribal knowledge. And you find that as things get more complex, this tribal knowledge is not scalable. So we find that, you know, my staff, our staff, they're getting burnt out. It's harder for them to collaborate as they kind of get more entrenched in these certain silos and naturally admins, they feel like they're flying blind. Too little visibility, too late, they're stuck putting out fires as opposed to actually managing the productivity of these practices. And you know, the existing tools that we have at our disposal, you know, a lot of the misters, they're purpose built for storing medical records. But when it comes to shepherding a case from the four walls of the clinic to the consultation to the actual ASC or hospital, ultimately we find that it, it doesn't really necessarily meet the clinical needs. And the analogy I often give is the tools that we have today are kind of like giving a digital artist, Microsoft Paint to do their job. There's something there, but it certainly doesn't rise to the challenge. And so I think all of these are a product of the increasing trend and push to outpatient. You know, we don't have the safety net of the hospital. We don't have the luxury of being able to in the fee for service world where things would just kind of get done as problems arose. But now we have more and more ownership of this process and we need to make sure that these patients get their surgery safely.

[Scott Becker]

Thank you. When you look at innovation in the surgical space, you talk about sort of trying to do things, not necessarily more, but doing them smarter. How is automation, how do you see artificial intelligence trying to help orthopedic practices, surgery centers, surgical clinics bring greater efficiency to workflows. Are you seeing that? And what kinds of outcomes or improvements are you starting to see as a result of bringing more AI and automation to workflows? Us.

[Dr. Ashvin Dhawan]

Great question. You know, I think one of the, you know, it's very sexy these days to talk about AI, but I think the key is how do you implement, how do you execute AI in a clinical workflow that makes sense with what we do, we subscribe to kind of the, these kind of five core themes. One, we want to use and leverage the technology to make it Effortless to for surgeons to articulate, communicate a no matter how complex their pre interim, postoperative needs. And the idea is we want to take away the micromanagement, take away the dependency on specialized staff. We want to be able to empower the teams and the system to begin to work autonomously. You know, software is really good at eliminating some of the tedious, mundane administrative tasks that also then collateral benefits. It minimizes manual errors when you have a system that's supporting a consistent high touch service. If you anchor yourself with the patient from the start of this journey, we can proactively kind of monitor the patient for making sure they don't miss the clearances, the labs, make sure there's no delay, no guesswork. We can handhold these patients using the technology to keep the care on track, revenue flowing, et cetera, and do it in a way that decompresses our overwhelmed staff. Nobody has the bandwidth to chase down the phone calls anymore. Nobody answers their phone, A lot of voicemails Leverage the technology to manage these patients at scale in a very personalized way that still allows for you to now drive the throughput in a way that maximizes the safety and maximize the satisfaction of the patient. The other side benefit of this is when you create these digital pathways that leverage the technology. You now have a digital case pipeline. The administrative folks that are charged with making sure that this processes are working perfectly can now track the KPI to ensure that they're managing productivity. Now instead of problems and with AI tools that are very tailored to specific workflows, you can also now scale best practices without compromising the surgeon autonomy. The biggest frustration as a surgeon is when you're kind of shoehorned into a technology that maybe doesn't necessarily understand your specific workflow. Well, we have the capacity now to understand individual practices and at scale, not sacrificing any surgeon autonomy, but still allow the practice as a whole to scale best practices and collaborate and preserve that business continuity.

[Scott Becker]

Thank you. Amazing what you're doing and what's going on. And you're consulting now with Lean Toss and advising them and working with a couple under orthopedic practices to help them understand this and how to improve things with automation and AI. Is that a fair assessment of part of the current role?

[Dr. Ashvin Dhawan]

Yeah, absolutely. I mean I started with the very organic need. It started exclusive with my practice first. And very quickly my partners noticed that I'm seeing greater surgical volume, my staff is less burdened, patients are happier. My case velocity is contracting, reschedule rates are dropping, cancellation rates are dropping. And my partners actually brought it to my attention and they're like, hey, Dr. Boan, what are you doing differently? Because something is working. We see a change in your practice.

[Scott Becker]

And.

[Dr. Ashvin Dhawan]

And that's when kind of like the light bulb went off and put me on this journey where I started working on. Is there a platform we can create that other surgeons and practices can benefit from? And it kind of just took off from there. My peers started using it, they loved it. And we've just kind of been organically continuing to grow from that forward. And, you know, with leantas, we all have this unified vision of creating this ability to manage surgery end to end, no matter where on the care continuum. You live wherever you are in that journey. By anchoring with the patient from the get go, we can manage it throughout that process, understand the demand, create the supply in the hospitals or asc, match it together so that we can use these sophisticated algorithms to drive the volume in a very passive way that allows practices to focus on delivering care and not worrying about capacity management, not worrying about maximizing forecasts or predicting which candidates are going to slip through the cracks.

[Scott Becker]

Thank you. Taking one step back, you're a brilliant orthopedic surgeon that also involves himself in the operations of surgery and the management of practice. Talk a little bit about what does this all mean for the future of surgical care and outpatient surgical care. How do you see innovations in AI and automation having an impact on access, care quality and sustainability in the years ahead?

[Dr. Ashvin Dhawan]

Yeah, great question. I think by taking these processes out of the dark, by creating, let's call it a integrated digital ecosystem where we want to see one day a seamless match of the supply and the demand increasing access. Think of it as simple as an open table reservation where when I'm in the clinic seeing my patients in real time, I have clear understanding of the availability of, you know, where patients can get their procedures done, for example. And then it's an absolutely seamless process for the patient where they have this personalized journey. They know exactly what they need to get done to get to that, to the promised land and to their finish line. And having the system manage it so that, you know, our staff is so stretched, there's no shortage of work in the practice. It's not always the best and highest use of these staff members to, you know, send out, you know, 16 emails and filling out forms and faxing and, you know, constantly trying to reach out to the patient to make sure they are on track. They barely have the bandwidth to do that. So you know, a system can do it much more reliably and it allows us to have that sustainable growth. You know, there's, there's such a shortage of access to care right now that these tools are only going to increase that access, increase the ability for us to deliver this care, and remove some of the obstacles that sometimes get in the way of us wanting to do what we do best, which is deliver great surgical outcomes.

[Scott Becker]

Dr. Wang, you specifically used some of the Lean Toss tools in helping to manage practice and improve throughput and operations. Can you take a moment and just give us an example of what this looks like and how that might work?

[Dr. Ashvin Dhawan]

Yeah, great question, Scott. One example comes to mind of a practice that we recently worked with. One of the luxuries you get when and work with our team is you get the benefit, the collective wisdom and knowledge of best practices and working with hundreds of different practices that are trying to cultivate a great outpatient surgical pipeline in the ASC setting. So I can recall what happened in this scenario is we implemented our tools, which is basically creating that digital surgical pipeline. And as you start tracking everything end to end, some interesting insights immediately came to light. We saw that this particular practice, for example, was having a reschedule rate that was unusually high within the weeks leading up to surgery. And what we found when we did a deep dive, when the system, it's querying the users, trying to understand what the patients are experiencing, we found really quick that they had a financial illiteracy problem. With the tools that we had in place, we could reorient the infrastructure to engage the patient the moment they're walking out of the office. Hey, just want to let you know, we know surgery can be a financially difficult decision. These are the four paths to financing your surgery. And by producing this information in a workflow, an automated workflow earlier in the process, we immediately saw within a matter of weeks, an almost 50% reduction, that reschedule rate within a week. And so this is a small example of how just by creating a data driven process, you can start to see insights about how you can pull the levers in that surgical throughput to really maximize not only the patient experience, but driving that, that volume into your ASC or outpatient setting.

[Scott Becker]

Thank you. You talked a lot about and what a great practice you've had and what a great experience you've had with Lean Toss. Anything else that we didn't cover today or final thoughts you'd like to share as well?

[Dr. Ashvin Dhawan]

Dr. Duan, you know, I think we're at an inflection point. You know, I think the data right now exists in different silos. And as we all know, the power is in giving this data to the right tools and systems to be able to maximize the outcomes, maximize the collaboration and thoughtful ways in which we can drive better outcomes for everybody. My message to my peers is simple. You know, start by figuring out, you know, if you don't measure it, you can't fix it. Simple way to start is just like that. You know, some more sophisticated docs maybe manage like a spreadsheet or something, where if you start monitoring every patient from the moment they indicated surgery to the time they make it to the outpatient surgery center, you'll be shocked by what you may uncover. Lights, the best disinfectant. And so if you measure what matters, automate the repetitive stuff, empower your teams to be able to execute and get these patients there. And then if you have a way of keeping it accountable and transparent, you're going to uncover a lot of efficiencies, synergies, and be able to deliver care in a way that you've never had before. And so I think we sometimes get complacent. You know, we're so busy. If I'm a surgeon doing 500 cases a year, I don't have time to micromanage, you know, what it takes to get these patients there. But if you've spent all this time getting the patients to the diagnostic workflow, getting them their imaging, only to see them walk away or find care elsewhere because your process is broken, I think that's a shame. And, you know, so I want all of my peers to kind of pay close attention to that and look at questions, you know, all the things that we take for granted because this is a time, a ripe time, where technology is really making a big difference.

[Scott Becker]

What an amazing career and what amazing work that you do with Lean toss that Lean Toss does in this area. I want to thank you, Dr. Duan, for joining us on the Beckers Healthcare podcast today. Just tremendous. Thank you very much for joining us.

[Dr. Ashvin Dhawan]

Thanks for having me, Scott. Always a pleasure.