Member Focus

Title: Chief Executive Officer
Name of ASC: DISC Surgery Center at Newport Beach
City: Newport Beach
State: California
How long has your facility been an ASCA member? Five or more years

What are your top three tips for timely patient collections?

1. Surgeons dictating timely in the OR, before they leave the room, which is what we call best practice. We have a couple of surgeons who leave the OR not dictating, because they are overscheduled or because they are late for their next patient/call or they plan to dictate in their office, but somehow that drags on a couple of days. This significantly impacts days to bill.

2. Having a complete and accurate patient record.

3. A process to capture any discrepancy between the preauthorized codes and the coded operative record, so we can capture any discrepancy prior to billing and discuss as a team. We can see why they occurred, and errors in preauthorization or errors in dictation or coding can be corrected prior to it going out and denied, slowing down reimbursement.

Do you routinely perform EKGs on select patients in your facility prior to their procedure?

Our patients that are having an incision—spine surgeries, as opposed to pain cases—must see an internist and have a normal EKG in the chart. We occasionally have to repeat them in the facility, however, the spine surgeries get a full H&P with labs and EKG prior to admission by their primary care provider.