Are you making it easy to schedule cases at your center? One of the biggest challenges for ambulatory surgery center (ASCs) is figuring out whether the physicians who are using their center are easily able to schedule all the surgical cases they want to at their facility. It's critical to carefully examine the barriers that exist in the offices while trying to schedule these cases.

Many centers underestimate the importance of determining what these are and how to remove them, or decrease their impact on scheduling cases at the center. Getting involved at the ground level is paramount. First of all, build a relationship with each of the physician offices – especially with the person responsible for scheduling cases. Do this through personal visits and meetings with these individuals with discussions that center on what might prevent them from scheduling cases at the center. Then help eliminate any of the barriers that are in your control.

Barriers frequently include managed care issues, patient preference, referral patterns, equipment conflicts, and physician schedules at other facilities. Surprisingly enough, many of these scheduling barriers can be reduced or eliminated by the centers, but unless you are aware of what each office deals with, many times these problems go unaddressed. Center administrators make the mistake of assuming that getting cases scheduled is an easy and efficient process.

By working with the individual offices to address their issues, you can improve the ease of scheduling and increase the level of satisfaction with the center. At the same time, through your improved relationship with the offices, you may find that you have opportunities to improve center performance.