Becker's ASC Review

11 THOUGHT LEADERSHIP 'ASCs are the future:' How MemorialCare Medical Foundation's new CEO wants to change healthcare By Paige Haeffele D avid Kim, MD, was recently appointed CEO of MemorialCare Medical Foundation, a Fountain Valley, Calif.-based medical group encompassing MemorialCare Medical Group, Greater Newport Physicians and more than 200 outpatient care centers. He will also serve as chief executive of the MemorialCare Heart & Vascular Institute and the MemorialCare Cancer Institute and as the lead physician executive of the MemorialCare Clinically Integrated Network. Dr. Kim first worked with MemorialCare from 2009 to 2015, where he served as a medical director before advancing into leadership roles, including regional medical director. Becker's connected with Dr. Kim to discuss his plans for his new role, his healthcare philosophy and more. Editor's note: Responses have been lightly edited for length and clarity. Question: What inspired you to take this role and what are your plans for success? Dr. David Kim: I grew up at MemorialCare professionally; it was the first evolution of my first job as a doctor and then my first foray into administration and leadership. I first experienced what nonclinical healthcare administration was like at MemorialCare, and so it felt a bit like coming back home. From a personal and professional standpoint, what MemorialCare offers is the opportunity to be big and small at the same time. It's big enough that we can take advantage of the scale to provide world-class care in terms of resources, talent, service lines and clinical expertise, but it's small enough that we're still able to meet patients in a more intimate and personal way. From a leadership perspective, it allows us to be more agile in decision-making and strategic directions. If all of a sudden we want to move in a different direction, it doesn't take an exorbitant number of meetings — because we're small enough where we can get leaders in a room to say, "Okay, here's the new direction, here's how we're going to do it together." MemorialCare also has the ability to be in an organization that can materially and tangibly improve the care of a community. I can go home and tell my kids what I did today to help make healthcare better for the communities we serve, and then articulate exactly what it is that we did: We made it easier for a patient to make an appointment. We made it easier for patients to follow up with their physician. We made it easier for patients to make a phone call to talk to somebody; that is worth getting up in the morning to go to work for. What are my plans for success? First, I'm hoping and planning to succeed. So that's important. My general approach is thinking about how to deliver on the quadruple aim: experience, quality, caregiver and physician experience. So how do we deliver on that in a way that engages physicians as partners, caregivers and employees as active contributing members of a team, but also so each of them goes home and says the same thing to their family: "I made healthcare better today." rough driving the principles of value- based care, we can think more about how to take resources to care for a population versus, "How do I care for our population so I can get more resources?" ose are very different approaches. And I think the future of healthcare relies on figuring out how to do value-based care successfully. And when you look at some of the investments that Memorial has made over the years, like our ASCs, and our many other joint ventures, we're ahead of the game, in terms of thinking about how to care for our population in a value-based care way. So how do we execute on value-based care? How do we engage physicians as partners? How do we engage our employees and caregivers as active, contributing members of the team? And then how do we make care accessible? The less-discussed threat to ASC growth By Patsy Newitt L es Jebson, regional administrator at Greenville, S.C.- based Prisma Health, joined Becker's to discuss the threats to outpatient growth and what procedures are moving to the ASC setting. Editor's note: This interview was edited lightly for brevity and clarity. Question: What is the biggest threat to outpatient migration? Les Jebson: The single greatest threat is not in bricks and mortar, or implants and supplies or payer reimbursements. Instead, it is systemic national shortages of perioperative professionals, starting with certified registered nurse anesthetists, surgical technologists and registered nurses. Those that create a team-based care environment, offer flexible staffing and benefits and tight orchestration of procedure scheduling at specific locations will be better positioned to deal with this threat. Q: What procedures are moving to the outpatient setting? LJ: For the proverbial long-term horizon, I believe that we will see a convergence of imaging/procedural and surgical suites. For the short-term horizon, I believe we will see a continued migration of vascular and cardiac procedures to the ASC arena. In both scenarios, there has to be a willingness and collaborative spirit with payers in orchestrating these shifts. In orthopedics, an aggressive migration to more outpatient and 24-hour spine cases along with a consistent trajectory of more total joints. Shoulders will be the largest growth area once Medicare approves. n

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