FEATURE The Report


Pennsylvania Health Care Cost Containment Council (PHC4) re- leased the report referenced in this article, “Financial Analysis 2011, Volume Two, Ambulatory Surgery Centers,” last fall.


PHC4 is an independent state agency established in the mid- 1980s and charged with col- lecting, analyzing and reporting information that can be used to improve the quality and restrain the cost of health care in the state. The reporting year for the ASCs involved is based on each facility’s fiscal year that ended during 2011.


Cost Control Strategies that Work


Several Pennsylvania ASCs reported lower than average operating expenses in last fall’s Pennsylvania Health Care Cost Containment Council report. Two share their secrets to success. BY SAHELY MUKERJI


S


upply and staffing costs are the two main incidentals to keep an


eye on when you are trying to keep expenses low in your ASC, says Karen Maloney RN, CASC, adminis- trator of Tri-State Surgery Center in Washington, Pennsylvania.


Lowering Supply Costs To keep supply charges low, Tri-State Surgery Center, which operates as a joint venture, leverages its hospital partner’s purchasing power. “We’re able to piggyback on some of their


24 ASC FOCUS APRIL 2013


supply contractors and the same group purchasing organization (GPO),” Ma- loney says. “Sometimes that savings is substantial, like hundreds of dollars per product; other times it’s a smaller amount, but it all adds up. The hospi- tal saves us 2.5 percent on all supplies from the contractors. That makes our discount 10 percent, whereas before, without the hospital supply contrac- tors, it was 7.5 percent.” Spartan Health Surgicenter in


Monongahela, Pennsylvania, another ASC that operates as a joint venture,


also makes use of its hospital part- ner’s purchasing power to keep its supply costs low. “Over time we’ve taken advantage of GPO pricing,” says Patrick S. Garman, administra- tor. “We’re also very aggressive with our vendors, renegotiating constant- ly, with physician input, which cer- tainly helps.” The surgery center keeps a sharp


eye on its inventory, as well. “We don’t have a lot of product sitting on the shelf,” Garman says. “We get inventory shipped within a day and overnight if necessary. Pricing inven- tory and ensuring that there are no unexpected price hikes or errors in the vendor invoices require constant vigilance.” At Tri-State Surgery Center, Ma-


loney says, the ASC has assigned a nurse “to review the list of supplies that everyone orders because a lot of time people order out of habit, and we were finding some overstocking. Since we’ve put her in this position, we’ve saved $20,000 in supplies over the last two months.” One other factor keeps costs low on the supply side, Maloney says:


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