COVER STORY


Wish I Knew Factors to consider before opening an ASC BY ROBERT KURTZ


G


wen Donithan, RN, Laurri Wal- lace and Teresa Burwell, RN,


have one thing in common: Each helped open a new surgery center. “Building an ASC is extremely


rewarding,” says Donithan, clinical director for Roanoke Valley Center for Sight (RVCS) in Salem, Virginia. When she accepted her current position, she immediately began supervising the development of the organization’s sec- ond ASC in Roanoke, Virginia. That ASC saw its first patients in January 2018. “You are bringing a great facility to meet the needs of your patient com- munity while helping surgeons execute their vision.”


Unfortunately, the path to a celebra-


tory ribbon-cutting is full of unexpected bumps and curves, says Wallace, chief executive officer and chief operating officer of the Surgery Center of Roswell in Roswell, Georgia, which completed its first case in May 2018. “It is amazing how much you need to understand and then execute to get to that finish line.”


16 ASC FOCUS MAY 2020 | ascfocus.org Order Disorder


Until you actually start working on opening an ASC, it is difficult to appre- ciate the complexity of the process, says Burwell, director of Prime Surgi- cal Suites in Granite Falls, North Car- olina, which welcomed its first patient in October 2019. “I wish I knew the clear sequence of


events I needed to tackle and the time- frame for how long each was going to take,” Burwell says. “For exam- ple, we needed to have the state phar- macy license for our controlled sub- stances before we would get our Drug Enforcement Administration license. We needed medications in the center to receive our state medical license. We needed our state medical license before we could apply for accreditation.” Burwell says she learned a lot of this


on the fly. “We would get to one hurdle, find we missed a step and need to go back,” she says. “Now, we had to wait for that process to run its course. The more missteps, the more time was added


to the project. Piecing the order of as much of the process together in advance should reduce your number of setbacks.” Missteps translate to delays in open- ing and increases—sometimes sig- nificant—in cost. “Our opening was delayed six months,” Wallace says. “One of the reasons was that there was an issue with the setup of our heating, ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC) in our operating rooms. Since the state architect had a full schedule, we needed to wait a while for our inspection, only to then learn that the duct work needed to be completely rerun, and we had no choice but to absorb the entire cost.” The lessons learned: “Choose peo-


ple knowledgeable in healthcare who are current with the latest regulations and ensure you have solid contracts to fall back on to recoup expenses if there are errors,” Wallace says.


Consider finding people with an


even narrower focus, says Donithan, who has applied what she learned from her Roanoke experience to the building of RVCS’s third ASC in Martinsville, Virginia, which opened in August 2019, and fourth ASC in Wytheville, Virginia, projected to open by year’s end.


Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12  |  Page 13  |  Page 14  |  Page 15  |  Page 16  |  Page 17  |  Page 18  |  Page 19  |  Page 20  |  Page 21  |  Page 22  |  Page 23  |  Page 24  |  Page 25  |  Page 26  |  Page 27  |  Page 28  |  Page 29  |  Page 30  |  Page 31  |  Page 32  |  Page 33  |  Page 34