COVER STORY
during a Pandemic
BY ROBERT KURTZ
A
pandemic was not something Raghu Reddy ever expected to
confront as executive administrator of SurgCenter of Western Maryland in Cumberland, Maryland. Navigat- ing COVID-19, however, has been easier thanks to support from UPMC Western Maryland, the hospital that jointly owns the ASC with local phy- sicians, he says. “At the end of the day, we are partners in patient care,” says Reddy. “We strive to help meet their chal- lenges and they do their absolute best to help us. This health crisis has tested our partnership, and I do not think our response could have gone any better.”
Carole Guinane, RN, shares this sentiment. She serves as the executive director for ASC operations at Cedars- Sinai in Beverly Hills, California, a
role in which she oversees eight of the health system’s ASCs, seven of which are joint ventures. “We work closely as a team with our health system part- ner to create safe practices across the system during this crisis. This experi- ence has helped ensure patient care is never compromised.”
Coordinating a successful response to the COVID-19 virus between an ASC and its hospital partner relies largely upon communication, says Peter Blach, Texas market president for United Surgical Partners International (USPI), a subsidiary of Tenet Health- care. Blach is responsible for most of USPI’s Texas operations, which includes the company’s relationship with Baylor Scott & White Health in Dallas, Texas. USPI and Baylor Scott
10 ASC FOCUS SEPTEMBER 2020 |
ascfocus.org
& White Health have joint ventures involving more than 35 ASCs and sur- gical hospitals in Texas. “We find tremendous value in
leveraging USPI, Tenet and Baylor Scott & White expertise and shar- ing best practices with one another,” Blach says. “As decisions are made, USPI disseminates that informa- tion down to the individual facilities, where administration deploys all of the tactics and strategies we believe are important. The top priority during this pandemic is to keep staff, physi- cians, and patients and their families safe. Every decision we push down to our facilities has that as the para- mount theme.” Effective communication was par- ticularly critical for the Cedars-Sinai ASCs in the early days of the pan- demic, Guinane says. While the cen- ters stopped performing elective surgeries, they never shut down opera- tions. Emergent cases were kept on the schedule. Others needed to be added.
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