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INOV8’s Vision
The goal of INOV8 Orthopedics is to create an innovative, advanced, and efficient surgical program that takes advantage of the latest medical technology and best practices in management to create superior outcomes for all stakeholders. In addition to driving superior outcomes, the program will also lead the industry in the efficient delivery of advanced medical care through the employment of best practices in medicine that reduce waste and associated costs. The opportunity is clear: the demand for clinical surgical care is increasing and there is a pressure to innovate to improve outcomes, patient experience, and maximize the utilization of current healthcare spend.
Reimagining the Provider’s Experience
When examining a list of the best companies to work for, clinical healthcare companies are nowhere to be seen.[1] Companies like Google and Facebook are renowned for their culture and environment, qualities that make those companies among the most desired employers to work for in the world. Aside from the purely altruistic goal of creating happier employers, innovative companies like Zappos and Google have created work environments that enable their employees to be exceptionally motivated and productive.[2] Compensation is merely one of the motivational tools at the disposal of managements (often not even the most effective), and companies that realize and plan for this have a competitive advantage.
Unfortunately for modern clinical medicine, culture is not emphasized, and the experience and happiness of healthcare providers is not a substantial business consideration. As business practitioners, we understand the experience of the patient is paramount, and it follows that if we can make our healthcare providers happier and more satisfied, we can also improve the experience and outcomes for our patients. Fortunately, many of the aspects of clinical medicine that are responsible for creating sub-optimal work environments also completely unnecessary. By deliberately examining the business design of a surgery center, and the best management practices from other industries, we can dramatically improve the experience for providers in our surgery center. Doctors are trained to be physicians, not managers, so it is essential that we employ surgeons who understand and are willing to buy into all aspects of our business. By hiring surgeons and employees who understand our beliefs about best practices (reasonable expectations for workload, deliberate and thoughtful interaction between employees, effective compensation packages, collaboration and teaching), we can create the type of self-sustaining culture that is present in top businesses like Zappos. Aside from being an altruistically worthy goal of making our employees happy and improving the patient experience, happier providers will create a work environment that is more operationally efficient and viable as a business. Creating an optimal work environment that attracts the industry’s best talent is even more important for surgeons; this is due to regulations on surgeon compensation. These regulations limit the ability of management to compensate surgeons; thus, if we can make other aspects of their work more attractive, we can incentivize the right surgeons to work with us.
Current research on compensation and ownership structure for hospitals and surgery centers indicates that industry practices can be substantially improved. [3] Such improvements would help to create our desired organizational outcomes of efficiency, patient outcome, and employee satisfaction. By linking the compensation of surgery center employees (non-surgeons) to those 3 parameters, we can create a workforce that implements our goals all the way from top managers down to custodial staff.
Improving Patient Experience and Surgical Outcomes
For patients, the surgical experience can be burdensome and frightening. One of the fundamental goals of our surgery center is to improve the experience for our patients. This extends from their actual surgical outcomes to their happiness and satisfaction in dealing with our facility’s staff. Once again, aside from being a fundamentally good thing to do, creating happier patients also creates patients that are easier to treat, creating fewer complications for the surgery center’s work flow. By emphasizing the service aspect of our practice, we are emulating some of the best aspects of concierge medicine practices, where service to the patient is paramount.
Much of improving our patient’s experience can be achieved procedurally. By mindfully and deliberately considering each step of our patient’s interaction with our facility we can curate the experience we want our patients to have. Each point at which a patient interacts with us represents an input for their perception of service we perform, and our commitment to service will be evident at each of those points. Minimizing redundant paperwork through effective use of EMR systems, effectively implementing patient registration, and minimizing wait times are examples of ways we can improve patient experience, and ultimately how satisfied they are with the services we perform.[4]
The grand result of our efforts will be our surgical outcomes. By employing the best surgeons, equipping them with the best technology and training, and creating a phenomenal work environment, our patients will have the best standard of care in the industry. The operational efficiency that results from the confluence of our business practices will also enable us to maximize the number of patients we can give high quality service to. In putting all these pieces in place, our high standard of care will continue to drive patient volume to our facility, becoming the key to its ongoing success as a sustainable business.
Leadership in Clinical Research
The healthcare industry faces a unique problem in regard to the availability and use of clinical data. Never before has there been more valuable data available; however, given the structure behind how this data is collected and analyzed, it is slow to be utilized for meaningful research. One of the primary aspects of the surgery center will be to structure the facility to promote the collection and fast, meaningful use of this data for clinical research. By mindfully integrating our technological solutions and getting complete buy-in from all of our stakeholders (employees, patients, and surgeons), we will be uniquely positioned to generate, analyze, iterate, and act on clinical research data. The result of this streamlining of processes and information will be a high quality of research that is actionable long before competing sources of research are available
By deliberately considering the design of a new surgery center, we create an opportunity to create a facility that creates no barriers to research. Our facility’s ability to generate top clinical research will also be a valuable tool for generating patient volume. High quality patients will desire access to high quality care, and being known as center for clinical research will be a strong marketing tool for creating patient volume. Our facility’s position as a research institution will also create a self-selecting process for surgeons who want to do clinical research, furthering our goals for the surgery center.
Cutting Edge Training and Technology
To support our other efforts, our surgery center must take advantage of the best practices in the industry. The surgeons we recruit must be the experts and pioneers of their fields to ensure that we are always using the best technology and surgical techniques available. By establishing ourselves on the leading edge of the surgical field, we will have the unique capacity to do surgeries other facilities can’t. This in turn will drive patients seeking the best quality of care to our facility.
Because the surgery center will take advantage of the most advanced technology and surgical techniques available, we will have a unique responsibility and opportunity as the custodians of that knowledge. The last of our fundamental goals will be to disseminate this knowledge and provide training to surgeons on the techniques that we pioneer. An added benefit to providing this training will also support the operational viability of the surgery center; as our facility becomes known as a leading educator for other surgeons, patients will flock to the facility because they will perceive it as being the best in the field. We have identified Amerra as being a key partner in the delivery of this medical information and training.
