Could you discuss several benchmarks that surgery center leaders overlook or under-use in their benchmarking efforts?

Becker’s ASC Review, a site that provides Practical Business, Legal, and Clinical Guidance for Ambulatory Surgery Centers, recently published an article on benchmarks that ASC administrators often neglect.

These are important benchmarks not just for ASCs, but for any physician executives, healthcare practice managers, and the valuators and consultants they work and plan with.

An excerpt:

Chance Sherer, manager with VMG Health, discusses several benchmarks that ASC administrators often forget to include in their data collection efforts. 

Q: Could you discuss several benchmarks that surgery center leaders overlook or under-use in their benchmarking efforts? 

Chance Sherer: All ASCs are different. They each have unique case mixes, different volumes and negotiated reimbursement schedules. They are sized differently, some with more operating rooms and others with larger medical staffs. While benchmarks provide meaningful comparable data points, the keys to successful benchmarking are identifying benchmarks and understanding variances. While there may be perfectly valid reasons for variances from a given benchmark, these variances may not necessarily signal under/over performance in a given area. By reviewing various statistics reported in various benchmarking studies, an ASC can determine which key factors to track and compare over time. This will help administrators and physicians bring to light any improvements or declines in operations over time.

With that being said, there are several key financial and operations statistics that we examine in our valuation analyses that many administrators often do not track or do not utilize for benchmarking purposes. A few examples include:

–    Accounts receivable aging (percentage per period); 
–    Staff hours per case, 
–    Expenses as a percentage of net revenue; and,
–    Percentage of cases and revenue by physician. 

These benchmarks can be compared to the industry using the VMG 2011 Intellimarker Benchmarking Study, found on our website at vmghealth.com.

The article goes on to detail each of those four variables, what they mean, and most importantly, why they matter.

Read the whole thing here. 

Keep Your Practice In Shape! 

More:  Find out 10 Ways to Cut Surgery Center Costs Before 2012 Ends.