Ideas That Work: Offer OR Time to Broaden Your Service Lines

Practical pearls from your colleagues

What to do if you want to start or enhance a foot and ankle service line but don’t have access to orthopedic surgeons who specialize in the field? Try calling the most well-known orthopedic foot and ankle surgeons in your area and see if they could use open blocks of time at your ASC, suggests Joseph S. Park, MD, an associate professor of orthopedic surgery at the University of Virginia in Richmond.

As long as they’re in private practice and not employed by the large health system in your community, they might be interested, says Dr. Park. Because relatively few ortho surgeons specialize in foot and ankle procedures, their services are at a premium and patients often have long waits for care.

“If an ASC could offer the excellent surgeons in their area regular blocks of time when they normally can’t find available ORs, I think that would be very appealing,” says Dr. Park. “These surgeons often work within restricted blocks of OR time at the hospitals. Once you have an affiliation with them, these surgeons could also bring urgent add-on cases your way, such as ruptured Achilles tendon repairs, if you have available OR time that would otherwise not be utilized.” OSM