Making Cataracts More Profitable

Improving profitability in an already efficient operation has its challenges. However as the saying goes, when one stops improving, one stops growing.  The key to improving is to continually evaluating your efficiencies when it comes to patient & staff scheduling, doctors block time, labor mix and related costs, disposable costs and anesthesia expenditures.

Scheduling patients at the right time to make certain you have the right amount of patients in the queue for your staff and surgeon is crucial. Avoiding lateness (whether it’s the patient, surgeon or staff) is the key, along with making sure your surgeon and/or staff do not take breaks between cases.

Efficient staffing of your pre-op, operating room(s) and post op often times involves hiring part-time staff who can pick up the extra load whether it be prepping the patient, scrubbing or circulating in the OR, cleaning instruments, etc…  Staffing your center with more part time staff can reduce your benefit costs and staff overhead. Each function in the center should be done by someone with the proper skills and appropriate pay scale.  It has proven to be very economical to utilize outsourcing services, such as Vantage Outsourcing. They not only provide staff, but also all the equipment, micro instruments and disposables used in a cataract procedures.

Disposable costs are a major cost of doing cataract procedures. Every six months to a year, asking your surgeon/owner to evaluate his/her surgical preferences and consider alternative disposables and/or suppliers can prove to be very profitable. When surgeon asks for a more expensive supply, provide the surgeon with a cost/benefit analysis of adding this supply and the impact of profitability on each of their cases. WIth the expertise of companies such as Vantage Outsourcing, they too can help you reduce our case costs by sharing with you what other facilities and/or doctors are doing and by recommending quality disposable items to use as an alternative to your current costly disposables.

2 OR set up may be good for some, but not for all.  Many surgeons like working in an environment where they go back and forth between two ORs. Vantage Outsourcing generally recommends to their clients that unless the surgeon is doing five or more cases an hour and at least 20 cases a day, we have found that the 2 OR set up to be inefficient. Keep in mind with 2 ORs, the center needs to equip each room with a phacoemulsification equipment and microscope, as well as staff. Unless a surgeon is fast and doing significant volumes, your paid staff and anesthesia person may be waiting on the surgeon to complete cases, which becomes very inefficient and costly to a center.

The easiest way to improving profitability is to increase case volume. This may mean taking time out of your busy day to visit with the area optometric businesses to find out to which surgeon they are referring their patients. Let them know what your center and surgeon have to offer their patients. As part of the outsourcing service, Vantage Outsourcing is able to share with you the referral patterns of ODs in a particular market, in relations to the various MDs. This information is extremely valuable and helpful in determining where a facility and/or doctor needs to put forth their efforts in terms of OD relationships.

In summary, you need to know, evaluate & improve your efficiencies and identify the sources of your surgeon’s referral base, in order to improve your cataract service profitability.