Keeping costs low is not simply a matter of purchasing less expensive equipment or laying off staff members. Instead, ASC executives can utilize benchmarking systems to ensure their dollars are being spent properly.
At Becker’s ASC 25th Annual Meeting: The Business and Operations of ASCs in Chicago, Oct. 18-20, an expert panel discussed how ASCs can better leverage benchmarking. The panel featured Stephanie Martin, vice president of operations at Westchester, Ill.-based Regent Surgical Health, and Temi Oluwayomi, director of supply chain at Regent Surgical Health.
Benchmarking is all about setting standards, according to Ms. Martin. She went on to explain the various ways it can be measured. “One is internal. Are we looking at just what is in our center on a weekly, monthly or yearly basis? Competitively, we want to look at what is going inside our center and compare it to similar centers. Strategic is a little different. This is looking at what is going on internally and comparing it to something outside of the industry.”
Within supply management at ASCs, Ms. Oluwayomi stressed being proactive. “In materials management, sometimes people don’t know when something is going wrong until it goes wrong. I think the goal here is to be proactive and manage the process and benchmark against yourself at various time points.”
Supply chain experts need to get data points from numerous people in the center, from vendors to physicians. However, it’s not just about tracking the numbers. Diving in and figuring out what the numbers mean results in big changes.
At Regent Surgical Health, Ms. Martin asks “why?” five times. And although it may seem redundant, after the fifth “why?” the real problem is discovered, and solutions can be made.