Issue link: https://beckershealthcare.uberflip.com/i/717576
41 INTEGRATION STRATEGY What Makes an ASC Successful? Order online $29.95 ASDManagement.com or Amazon Books Gives you an inside look at the business of managing people and culture— the qualitative stuff—that makes running a center most challenging." "Brilliant!" "ought provoking!" " Q: What do you wish the CEO did differently? "Balance the needs of the system with the local needs of different sites. In my humble opinion, there are some decisions and some initiatives that benefit a lot from standardization across sites and there is no rea- son to have variation. But, there are some local idiosyncrasies that are unique to certain sites. e strength of a CEO is to know how to bal- ance both." Additional comment "My wish is that more hospitals are encouraged to be at the forefront of healthcare. Oen our hospitals tend to react to changes, whether in the legal or commercial environment, rather than lead and make that change happen. e other thing is hospitals need more of a focus. Hospitals have tra- ditionally been the place to go to when someone is sick, but I think it would be great if physicians could really focus on population health and keep patients out of the hospital." 12. Pediatrician at a 400-bed pediatric hospital on the East Coast Q: What do you like most about your organization? "Everything we do is team-based. We always have at least two sets of eyes on the child when taking care of them. When we have a difficult situation, which is common, we have someone there to help — either someone with more experience or we have the opportunity to teach someone with less experience. I've been at three to four hospitals over the last 10 to 15 years, and that's something I really appreciate here." Q: What do you dislike most? "As a physician, we have a lot of oversight from the administration, as well as from the more senior physicians. ere is a lot of standard- ization. ey try to make us abide by a very certain way of delivering care. Sometimes there's not a lot of flexibility in the way we have to practice a certain technique, or in my case, deliver anesthetics. e second big issue — it's kind of a two-edged sword, because it's also a strength — is that we focus a lot of time and resources on each patient. Every child gets a full amount of care, to fulfill a certain criteria, before they go on to the next place in the hospital or get discharged. e most cost-effective measures are not necessarily em- ployed to deliver care." Q: What do you wish the CEO did differently? "In terms of patient care, there's not much more that can be done. In my experience both in and out of the operating room and interacting with consultants around the hospital, patients get the best care possi- ble in terms of the attention, treatment and degree of detail. at said, in terms of timeliness, sometimes there are a lot of delays in care be- cause it's a very busy hospital. We are dependent on specialty-specific care, but oen a patient has a health issue that affects multiple organ systems, which requires three or four specialists and several different teams. Our team-based approach could be improved over time. Our chair could foster it such that we have more oversight of perioperative care, for example. As an anesthesiologist, I could be more responsible for patients aer care and be there to answer questions that may oth- erwise take three or four people to answer. In terms of physician workload — I'm interested in academics. I value time for educational activities, and I am able to spend 60 percent of my time on clinical activities and 40 percent on research. I really like that research time the chair gives us. From a clinical standpoint, we need more leeway in terms of calling for a quality improvement or an initiative from a workflow perspective. Although it is important to be stringent on how care is delivered, we don't have the leeway to practice how we would like." 13. Employed physician at a 1,500-bed academic medical center in the Midwest Q: What do you like most about your organization? "e acuity of patients, the quality of care, having all of the resources under one roof, the inquisitive nature of the colleagues and the desire to tackle tough problems. ere's not just one thing." Q: What do you dislike most? "I would say bureaucracy and impersonal relationships. I don't know one, two or three cardiologists, or gastroenterologists or podiatrists. It's impersonal and siloed. Colleagues don't need to intermingle be- cause of the size." Q: What do you wish the CEO did differently? "To be forward-thinking rather than reactionary. For instance, we re- spond to changes legally or with payments, or changes to the way that care is delivered aer the fact. As one of the U.S. News' top hospitals, we can really be the people who start change, do things differently and look at problems differently. We are in that position. Perhaps that's one missed opportunity." n