← Becker’s Healthcare Podcast
Loading summary
Transcript15 lines
- [00:00]
A
Looking for a solution that helps alleviate administrative tasks for your staff and also helps your patients cover their out of pocket health care expenses. Find what you're looking for from CareCredit because CareCredit is a credit card and more, It's a helping hand for staff and a flexible payment solution for patients. For over 30 years, CareCredit, a synchrony solution, has offered patients a credit card with promotional financing options to get the care they want while helping staff do what they do best. Provide care to. To learn more, visit carecredit.com beckerspodcast this.
- [00:36]
B
Is Grace Lynn Keller with the Becker's Healthcare Podcast and we are recording live at the 22nd annual Spine Orthopedic and Pain Management Conference. I'm currently joined by Nikhil Shetty, who is the Chief Operating Officer at Midwest Interventional Spine Specialists. So thanks so much for being here. Let's start off by having you introduce yourself a little bit further and tell us more about your role in organization.
- [00:57]
C
Well, thank you very much for having me. My name's Nikhil Shetty, I'm an interventional pain physician and I've been working at Midwest Interventional Spine Specialists in Northwest Indiana for the past eight years. It's my first job out of fellowship. I love the area, I love the region and I love doing interventional pain. I have very good partners and very good colleagues in the area and we've been able to build a practice in a surgery center has been growing over the past several years, eight of which I've been a part of. And it's a very fulfilling role, you know, treating patients in the Northwest Indiana area and the full region corridor from a full spectrum of interventional pain medicine.
- [01:40]
B
Well, thank you for joining me. And let's start with what trends and shifts you're seeing right now in the industry that you think are the most important for leaders to pay attention to.
- [01:50]
C
Well, I think this conference being one Becker's ASC kind of highlights the importance and the trends of everything shifting to the outpatient setting in the ambulatory surgery center. The ambulatory surgery center model allows for faster, more efficient, safer delivery of healthcare and some of the higher acuity procedures that previously were done only in the hospital. HOPD settings are now being transitioned to an ambulatory surgery center where we have more control of the throughput. And so our clinical staff are very familiar working with they understand how our ORs operate, they understand patient turnover, they understand or turnover. And it has allowed us to offer these therapies that weren't previously available to Patients, unless they went to a hospital, sometimes had to stay overnight in the hospital. A lot of times these same procedures, namely interventional pain procedures, and specifically neuromodulation or spinal cord stimulation, can be delivered in the outpatient setting or in the ASC more efficiently.
- [02:51]
B
Absolutely. And staffing and workforce challenges also continue to be a concern across healthcare. So how is your organization navigating these pressures and which strategies have seemed to work well?
- [03:05]
C
Yeah, so staffing and workforce challenges are a concern across healthcare and I think I share that with a lot of my colleagues here at Becker. Speaking specifically of anesthesia services, anesthesia as a service line has been very difficult to obtain in the ambulatory surgery centers setting as well as in the hospital. It's harder and harder to get anesthesiologists to cover or CRNAs to cover your cases. So we have turned to temp agencies, other independent contractors to provide those anesthesia services. A lot of my anesthesia colleagues have given up a portion of their pain practice and are now doing anesthesia because of the high demand. And so we've kind of been able to shift and provide those anesthesia services by reaching out to those resources. I mean, additional staffing and workforce challenges are always a challenge in the small business setting. There's obviously a lot of office turnover and hiring our workforce is becoming more and more difficult and challenging. So we take it upon ourselves to educate from a top down perspective, all of our clinical staff, our apps, our advanced practice providers, our medical assistants, our nursing staff, our front office staff, that, that, you know, us being a small practice, we're able to kind of control that environment a little bit more. And it is more of a family, you know, my practice is a little bit more of a family feel to it. And so when we foster that relationship and sort of nurture them, because a lot of times they're young and we educate them. As they grow into careers and they advance into other careers, other aspects of their careers, we try and do everything that we can to retain that part of the workforce workforce. And as these transitions happen, as they naturally do, we establish a good training protocol so that as a person moves on to bigger and better things and we wish them well, part of their exit strategy is to help train the new person who's going to assume that responsibility.
- [05:01]
B
Absolutely. And you touched on it a little bit. But as outpatient care continues to grow, how do you see the role of orthopedic spine and ASCs evolving within the broader healthcare ecosystem?
- [05:13]
C
Well, I think orthopedic spine and ascs are going to become a bigger and bigger piece of the overall healthcare pie and taking up a bigger space within the healthcare ecosystem. I think it's because of our efficiencies, the fact that we are able to kind of limit waste, limit overhead, limit unnecessary wastage that happens when you go to a hospital to do certain kinds of procedures. We're able to streamline those processes and sort of, you know, almost micromanage every level into an area where everybody has their own responsibility. So we work as a well oiled machine. It's sort of like an F1 team. When the car stops in the pit stop, they change all their tires in seconds. And so everybody has a role, everybody has a responsibility. We are all dedicated to our roles and our responsibility in service of the better outcome for the patient. And I think because that mindset, starting from a small business mentality and then growing to a larger and larger asc, that model is now being looked at by bigger health health systems who are now in turn acquiring ASCs for their efficiencies. And so I think as to answer your question, I think it's only going to become a bigger and bigger role and a bigger part of the ecosystem.
- [06:27]
B
And as we wrap up our conversation, many organizations are exploring new technologies, partnerships or care models to improve efficiency and outcomes. So are there any innovations or initiatives that you found particularly promising?
- [06:40]
C
Yes, I think through this conference, the utilization of artificial intelligence, particularly in the scrubbing down of our notes, making sure that our codes are appropriate, making sure that everything is submitted on time. This whole revenue cycle management or RCM process, there are many different aspects to what happens throughout the throughput of a patient's life cycle, so to speak, as far as revenue cycle management is concerned. And the more of these process that we are able to automate and capitalize on, I think that makes our practice run more efficiency first. You know, it's been said before, but if you can't measure it, you can't really change it. And so it starts with data collection. When we're starting to be more aware of how much time a person in our clinical staff is spending on a certain task, we quantify that and we graph it out and we are able to see where the inefficiencies are lying. And if we can marry that with an adoption of artificial intelligence, we're able to possibly streamline those processes, making our already burdened workforce lives a little bit easier. And I think there will be, and there are already companies that are employing and utilizing AI to streamline this workflow. So that the patient's experience from start to finish is a little bit more streamlined. And if we're able to capitalize on those processes and applications out there, that's something that I'm personally interested in, and that's one of the reasons I'm at this conference as well.
- [08:18]
B
Absolutely. Well, thank you so much for being here to share these insights today. Is there anything else you'd like to share that we didn't touch on?
- [08:25]
C
No, I think we touched on everything. I do think that, you know, two things are growing. One is that outpatient ambulatory surgery centers, orthopedics and spine, and particularly interventional pain management, that practice, because of the ASC model, is growing. And if, even if we were to set that aside, the practice of interventional pain medicine is also growing in and of itself and in its own scope. And so as we adopt these newer and newer technologies, offer these newer therapies for newer indications, capturing a bigger population of the patients, especially with chronic pain, we are able to see that, you know, we're both fields are able to grow together and harmoniously.
- [09:05]
B
Wonderful. Well, thanks so much for being here. Again, we are recording live at the 22nd annual Spine, Orthopedic and Pain Management Conference.
- [09:13]
C
Thank you. Lovely to be here.