AS I SEE IT
An Administrator’s Guide to Retirement Hire from outside, divide the job or mentor an employee BY KRIS SABO, RN
The following is a com- mon story heard through- out the 5,900-plus ASCs across the US. Your 60-something ASC admin-
istrator who has been with your orga- nization forever is ready to retire. No problem, you tell yourself, we will just hire another administrator. How hard can that be? I will pause here to let this sink in and give you a moment to pick your chin up off the floor. We all need a plan for succession and the sooner you begin that plan, the better. You know that time flies when you are having fun, and before you know it, your administrator is 10 or 15 years older than when you hired them. Now that I have your attention, what is your plan?
Planning Options One option is to hire from outside your organization. This normally requires the assistance of a profes- sional search agency that has the contacts and staff to search from sea to shining sea for that perfect, or pos- sibly adequate, replacement for your administrator. The search company will request a list of desired qualifi- cations and then ask you to prioritize this list into the must-haves, nice-to- haves and so on. Their staff will then begin spreading the word throughout their network. We have all received these calls from time to time. A pro- fessional search company represen- tative—a head-hunter—will contact you to see if you know of anyone who knows of anyone who may be inter- ested in fill-in-the-blanks. I should add here that this option comes with a substantial price tag but can cer-
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tainly be a good value if this is your only option.
Another option is to divide and
conquer. There might already be two or three individuals in the organiza- tion who understand and are compe- tent in one or two of the administrator responsibilities but not all of them. If you restructure the leadership into a shared or collaborative structure, you might be able to get away with not hiring an administrator. For instance, your business office supervisor, who knows quite a bit about running the business, could assume those duties while the charge RN, who is well- versed in the clinical and quality of care aspects, could be in charge of those responsibilities. These two could then be the business director and clinical director, respectively. Icing on the cake would be if you had
an employee familiar with the facility and corresponding regulatory require- ments who could assume a leadership role as director of operations. The upside of this option is that these employees are already in the organization and know what they know and do what they do well. One would hope that these employees are devoted and looking for some added responsi- bility and upward mobility. This might be the perfect solution for an organi- zation whose employees are predom- inantly of the same generational mix. The downside is that there is no
longer a guy-at-the top, buck-stops- here person. This can occasionally lead to things slipping through the cracks and some finger pointing. This shared responsibility model might not sit well with some employees because there is not a single point of authority.
The advice and opinions expressed in this column are those of the author and do not represent official Ambulatory Surgery Center Association policy or opinion.
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