1. Benchmark salary data against local facilities. Your center must compete in its own market, Mary Sturm, RN, director of patient care services for Surgical Management Professionals, says. This means that while national data on employee salaries can be a helpful tool, local market data is essential to ensuring competitive salaries for regional candidates. “We have several centers in the Minneapolis metropolitan market which have a very urban wage scale,” she says. “What we determined to be the [Minneapolis metropolitan] wage scale is very different from a smaller Iowa community,” she says.
She says this data can be acquired from national surveys that break down data into regions, but the best source may be the candidates themselves. “You get general information about what various categories in your community are getting paid just from the candidates in front of you,” she says. “You will find out what they’re requiring and demanding.” Set your salaries at a competitive rate to ensure employee attraction and retention. During the interview process, you will probably find out quickly if your proposed salary rate is too low.
2. Don’t be afraid to send people home. Unlike the average hospital, ASCs can set clear expectations with staff that if case volume drops, the center will close early or compress more cases onto fewer days. Sandy Berreth, administrator of Brainerd Lakes Surgery Center in Baxter, Minn., says surgery centers should take full advantage of part-time staff members who are generally paid less and can come in at the last minute to cover an unexpected schedule change. Surgery center employees should be told up-front that if case volume drops, the center may need to close one day a week, which means they cannot expect a regular 40-hour work week.
3. Manage the total life cycle of equipment. Mike Kintner, service contracts manager at TriMedx, says the costs related to supporting a piece of equipment over its entire life cycle, from the point of acquisition to disposal, may actually equal or exceed what it cost to just purchase it. To minimize life cycle service costs as much as possible, he suggests ASCs strategically analyze whether a piece of equipment requires lifetime support that is cost-effective.
“What organizations don’t look at is how much it costs over a piece of equipment’s life span to support it, and they usually only look at the capital acquisition,” he says. “They have to actively manage service costs to understand that maybe an investment in equipment with higher capital would be better because its service costs over its life span will be lower than cheaper equipment.” More
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