Archive for June, 2022

Like too many other hospitals, you may be turning away high-revenue emergency surgical cases — to your competitors — because you can’t depend on timely, reliable coverage when minutes count. What used to be a significant contributor to your bottom line, and your reputation for service to your community, is withering away.

Local surgeons with their own elective practices used to take turns rotating on-call ED coverage. That was a less-than-perfect model that delayed care, disrupted surgeons’ work/life balance and hurt their own practice’s bottom line.

Few today are willing to still do that, and well-rounded general surgeons are already in increasingly short supply; in an article in JAMA Surgery, it’s called a “looming crisis” since fewer than half of U.S. hospitals provide emergency general surgery care due to staffing shortages and total costs. With little growth projected for the supply of surgeons this decade — combined with a growing and aging population and the retirement of many currently practicing surgeons — demand is projected to outpace supply of surgeons by 19,800 to 29,000 by 2030.

Hospital leadership often struggles with the numerous factors involved in providing an effective and efficient trauma and acute-care surgery (TACS) program. Along with the overall shortage of surgeons, many hospitals in underserved rural or depressed urban areas simply aren’t competitive enough in their markets to attract and keep skilled acute and trauma-level surgeons who are available 24/7/365. It’s also not without cost, yet it remains key to generating revenue. Plus, the hospital remains committed to delivering a level of broad, readily available healthcare to its community.

Left unresolved, this lack of an efficient and well-staffed TACS program can cause the hospital to turn away the high-revenue emergency surgical cases that can mean the difference between overall profit or loss in departments throughout the organization — not only ED but surgery, anesthesia, radiology, laboratory, surgical nursing units and more.

The cure: SAMGI on-duty surgicalists

Emergency surgical revenue growth requires qualified, reliable on-duty trauma and acute care surgical coverage. It’s that simple…and yet that difficult. But that’s exactly what SAMGI (Surgical Affiliates Management Group) provides — board-certified or -eligible surgical teams dedicated to your hospital. No locum tenens. No on-call surgeons.

We partner with hospitals to provide superior 24/7/365 always on-duty emergency surgical services that help improve patient outcomes while optimizing hospital performance, efficiency and revenues. Peer-reviewed results published in the Journal of the American College of Surgeons have demonstrated that our evidence-based, standardized care programs deliver long-term excellence in patient care and optimization of overall hospital performance by improving workflow, efficiency and patient outcomes.

Unlike locum tenens surgeons, locally based SAMGI surgicalists work on a team of surgical partners to deliver best-practice, evidence-based emergency general, orthopedic, urology, GI and neuro surgical patient care. They’re not temps or fill-ins. They’re full-time surgery teams whose sole focus is to enable emergency patients at emergency surgical staffed-challenged hospitals to undergo surgery without unnecessary delays. There’s no waiting for local surgeons or other issues requiring transfers to tertiary-care hospitals with accredited trauma services farther from home.

They can mean all the difference between the health of your patients…and your bottom line.

Click here to learn more about SMAGI and to discover the kind of ROI a SAMGI surgicalist program can deliver.

If your facility is presenting any of the following four symptoms, it’s likely your trauma and acute-care surgery (TACS) operation is on life support. Your revenue is flat-lining and need some sort of an intervention to revive it.

1. 1. 1. Hospital leadership is struggling with ways to successfully grow revenues for your surgical program. Prognosis: A sagging bottom line that’s unsustainable.
      2. Your facility falls short of meeting American College of Surgeons-verified trauma center criteria that it is redirecting those patients to ACS-verified trauma centers. Prognosis: Business and revenue opportunities lost.
      3. You’re relying on local surgeons to provide emergency general surgical care — surgeons already busy with their own private practices. Prognosis: Stressed local physicians, care delayed, clinical outcomes potentially poorer, and business lost. Again.
      4. Patients are reporting dissatisfaction with overcrowded EDs, delayed procedures, disjointed follow-up and a lack of family communications. And they’re telling others. Prognosis: Bleak.

There’s no question the pandemic has caused a huge hit to most hospitals’ bottom line. Costs of providing care have shot up, qualified surgeons and professional staff are exhausted and in increasingly short supply, and many elective procedures are still being cancelled or postponed. As healthcare works to recover, no organization can afford to turn away badly needed and profitable business. That especially includes an efficient, effective TACS program, which typically generates critically needed revenue, contributes to high levels of organizational performance and fuels community goodwill, repeat patient, and positive name recognition.

To excel, your Emergency Department should be admitting at least 1% of total admissions as an acute care surgery case and achieve a CMI index greater than 2.09. It also should be achieving acceptable surgical patient lengths of stay, readmission, and complication rates. To do all that, it needs to deliver immediate care adhering to standardized best-practice guidelines, including exceptional post-surgical care coordination and communication across departments. Anything less will fall short of achieving your goals.

So what can you do to revive your TACS program, or take it to higher levels of performance? The first step is identifying what factors — your organization’s particular “symptoms”— are standing in the way of a return to strong financial health: a high-volume TACS cases, a CMI that’s 2.0 or greater, and shorter lengths of stay. The next step is to take action to treat them—a step where you might should consider a SAMGI surgicalist intervention.

SAMGI’s surgicalist solution

SAMGI (Surgical Affiliates Management Group) delivers a proven cure for these issues. We partner with hospitals to provide superior, evidence-based 24/7/365 always on-duty emergency surgical services that improve patient outcomes while optimizing hospital performance, efficiency and revenues. Peer-reviewed results published in the Journal of the American College of Surgeons have demonstrated that our evidence-based, standardized care programs deliver long-term excellence in patient care and optimization of overall hospital performance by improving workflow, efficiency and patient outcomes.

Unlike locum tenens surgeons, locally based SAMGI surgicalists work on a team of surgical partners to deliver best-practice, evidence-based emergency general, orthopedic, urology, GI and neurosurgical patient care. They’re not temps or fill-ins. They’re full-time surgery teams whose sole focus is to enable emergency patients at emergency surgical staffed-challenged hospitals to undergo surgery without unnecessary delays. There’s no waiting for local surgeons or other issues requiring transfers to tertiary-care hospitals with accredited trauma services farther from home.

Click here to learn more about SMAGI and to discover the kind of ROI a SAMGI surgicalist program can deliver.