Hospital for Special Surgery at NCH in Naples, Fla., opened in early June, and the facility is offering benefits to the community within the operating room and beyond.
The new center is making an estimated $54 million impact on the local community, NCH COO Jon Kling told Becker’s. That figure includes salaries for employees and costs to build the center. Mr. Kling said about 200 employees were hired, and that number is expected to grow.
“The vast majority of those employees weren’t internal folks that transferred over to the new hospital,” he said. “We had additional employees that came from the local areas that joined that saw the vision of this world-class Orthopedic Center of Excellence and that everything is under one umbrella. Staffing is a challenge for all healthcare across the country, and we’re no exception. But I was pleasantly surprised that we’re fully staffed on Day One.”
HSS at NCH’s first days could be defined by one big success: efficiency. In its early days 100% of first cases were started on time, along with a 50% increase in OR productivity, Mr. Kling said.
“What this facility was designed to do is have 100% flow of orthopedic care all under one roof,” he said. “What that allows, from the efficiency standpoint, is that physicians can go from the clinic to the ASC to the main OP upstairs to the imaging center to read films, all within a few footsteps of each other. The inherent inefficiencies that large hospitals bring, this center was designed to move out of the way.”
Wellness is also baked in the design of the building with lots of windows for natural light, Mr. Kling said.
HSS has had an established presence in Florida, a state teeming with interest from independent groups and health systems wanting to grow their orthopedic lines. The advantage HSS at NCH has is specialists with singular clinical focuses, Mr. Kling said.
“In this market there are a lot of surgeons that are wonderful surgeons, but they typically do almost everything that they’re allowed to do by their training and their credentials,” he said. “But what NCH has adopted is that every physician that we have recruited is an NCH employee and fully vetted by NCH and HSS on the quality system … Everybody only does what they do every single day. You don’t have a physician that does everything. You have physicians that do one thing great, every single day.”
It’s the same model that HSS follows at its New York City headquarters.
Thinking forward Mr. Kling said he hopes to see more volumes and revenue, but all of that will follow a commitment to values.
“As a nurse leader who’s the COO of our health system, that margin will follow the mission,” he said. “The mission is to provide world class care at home. You don’t have to leave. Our community challenged us to be different and to be exceptional in care. We said ‘yes’ and invested in this facility and the people that most importantly work in it. I think what we’ll see is a top percentile in patient experience scores a year from now, and I think we’ll see staff engagement scores that are in the top percentile as well. I think it’ll be a model for health systems to come see how to make this work, and we’re looking forward to sharing our experiences.”
