Becker's ASC Review

13 ASC TURNAROUNDS Creating the Conditions for Success: Capitalizing on the Value of Your Employees By Lisa Rock, President, National Medical Billing Services B efore evaluating the effectiveness of your employ- ees, it is important to understand who you are as a company. This is achieved by asking your leader- ship team a few key questions: (1) What are your core values? Do they accurately reflect your existing culture? (2) Do you convey who you are to existing employees? (3) Are your goals and vision transparent and understood by your staff? These steps are critical because the U.S. job market currently suffers from a severe talent shortage, which is especially prominent in the healthcare industry. To complicate the matter, there is a turnover problem in healthcare. Compensation Force's recent Comp Data Surveys of more than 30,000 companies indicates that the turnover rate among healthcare workers has exceeded 19 percent. An employer will spend the equivalent of six to nine months of an employee's salary to recruit and train a replacement. In a complex working environment, as in the healthcare industry, it may require up to two years for an acceptably motivated and qualified employee to become fully productive (Training Industry Quarterly, May 2017). Working with your existing resources can help maximize your success and reduce your risk of losing good people. Exploring employee differences in thought, experience, soft and hard skills and personality is a good place to start. Diversity expands the breadth and depth of perspectives, ideas, values and interests, allowing them to increase the resources available to a company's deployment. Diversity can help to expand the reach of a company's services, its problem-solving skills and its teamwork. Understanding and properly allocating the strengths of existing staff benefits both employers and employ- ees. Employers achieve greater efficiency and effec- tiveness, while employees have more opportunities to excel and grow. To quote the legendary business author Jim Collins, "The key to great long term performance is to "get the right people on the bus, the wrong people off the bus, and the right people in the right seats." n Lisa Rock, founder and President of National Medical Billing Services, has more than 30 years of experience in healthcare management and specifically the ambulatory surgery center industry. With more than 500 employees working in multiple locations, National Medical Billing Ser- vices has won numerous awards and honors, most notably as a Best Places to Work Company by Modern Healthcare, Becker's ASC Review, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, and the St. Louis Business Journal. n Columbus Surgery Center and Eye Physicians Falls Victim to Ransomware Attack: 5 Things to Know By Laura Dyrda C yber attackers targeted Columbus (Neb.) Surgery Center and Eye Physi- cians in a ransomware attack, accord- ing to e Columbus Telegram. Here are five things to know: 1. e eye center reported a "data security incident" related to a ransomware attack that may have compromised patients' personal and health information. e attack occurred Oct. 7. 2. Forensic experts are determining how the incident occurred and whether an unauthor- ized third party accessed patient informa- tion. e investigation hasn't revealed evi- dence of unauthorized patient information access, but patient names as well as proce- dure notes and date of birth may be at risk. 3. Columbus Surgery Center and Eye Physi- cians sent a letter to patients whose informa- tion may have been exposed along with action to protect themselves. Patients did not initially report misuse of their information. 4. e center hired an outside security con- sultant to conduct a network security assess- ment and made improvements to hardware and soware as a result. 5. Columbus Surgery Center and Eye Physi- cians are the latest in a line of surgery centers that have reported ransomware attacks and potential breaches over the past year. Arkansas Oral and Facial Surgery Center in Harrison reported an attack in July and St. Mark's Surgical Center in Fort Myers, Fla., revealed potentially 33,000 patient files were exposed during an attack in April. n

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