Allston Stubbs, MD, an orthopedic surgeon at Wake Forest Baptist Health in Winston-Salem, N.C., shares his practice’s key business trends, including how he and his team approach the value-based payment model and maintain a strong patient base.
Question: As healthcare transitions toward the value-based payment model, how is your practice measuring outcomes and what are the remaining challenges for physicians?
Dr. Allston Stubbs: We are measuring orthopedic outcomes in three ways. The first is through patient satisfaction scoring such as Press-Ganey surveying, internal web-based feedback and quality improvement initiatives. The second method is through a roll out of simple patient reported outcomes across all patients in our global clinical platform. Finally, we have a clinical research program that captures detailed patient reported outcomes in areas of new technology and advanced techniques.
The challenges to an outcomes-based practice model comprise:
- Identifying what outcomes matter to the process, patient and provider
- Automation of the process to empower physicians
- Staying responsive to trends in the data.
Q: How do you maintain and grow a strong patient base?
AS: We maintain and grow a strong patient base by making insightful clinical decisions, empowering our patients with knowledge and technological access and encouraging a culture of empathy and teamwork.
Q: What are key business trends in your orthopedic practice?
AS: The key business trends in our orthopedic practice are provider consolidation, cost-center reorganization, practice line coordination, CMS compliance and value-based outcomes metrics.
Learn more from Dr. Stubbs at the 24th Annual Meeting: The Business and Operations of ASCs in October 2017. Click here for more information.
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