As healthcare shifts deeper into value, successful orthopedic practices will revamp their business strategies to meet quality and outcomes metrics.
Allston Stubbs, MD, an orthopedic surgeon at Wake Forest Baptist Health in Winston-Salem, N.C., shares his practice's key business trends, including how he and his team approach the value-based payment model and maintain a strong patient base.
Question: As healthcare transitions toward the value-based payment model, how is your practice measuring outcomes and what are the remaining challenges for physicians?
Dr. Allston Stubbs: We are measuring orthopedic outcomes in three ways. The first is through patient satisfaction scoring such as Press-Ganey surveying, internal web-based feedback and quality improvement initiatives. The second method is through a roll out of simple patient reported outcomes across all patients in our global clinical platform. Finally, we have a clinical research program that captures detailed patient reported outcomes in areas of new technology and advanced techniques.
The challenges to an outcomes-based practice model comprise:
- Identifying what outcomes matter to the process, patient and provider
- Automation of the process to empower physicians
- Staying responsive to trends in the data.
Q: How do you maintain and grow a strong patient base?
AS: We maintain and grow a strong patient base by making insightful clinical decisions, empowering our patients with knowledge and technological access and encouraging a culture of empathy and teamwork.
Q: What are key business trends in your orthopedic practice?
AS: The key business trends in our orthopedic practice are provider consolidation, cost-center reorganization, practice line coordination, CMS compliance and value-based outcomes metrics.
Learn more from Dr. Stubbs at the 24th Annual Meeting: The Business and Operations of ASCs in October 2017. Click here for more information.