Hello.

Welcome to today’s podcast about

our surgical coordinator spotlight series.

My name is Rebecca Brygel.

I’m the CEO and founder of Surgimate,

and I’m joined today by Cammie and

Nicole from Summit Orthopedic Specialists.

Welcome, ladies.

Thank you for having us.

It’s a pleasure.

This is our first time having

two people in one session,

so very excited to have you both.

Cammie, please introduce yourself.

Tell us about who you are.

Hi!

I’ve actually worked with Summit Orthopedics for about

ten years, starting at the front desk.

I am now a surgery coordinator.

I’ve kind of explored my way

through various departments in the office,

starting with referrals, patient access, so

answering phones, scheduling, regular appointments.

I’ve done some finance, doing out-of-pocket estimates

for procedures in office and out of office, and

then finally started with surgery about five years ago.

Surgery stuck, and I am now

the supervisor of the surgery department.

Wow.

I’m the director of administration here at Summit.

I’ve been here for the past five years, and

I have a huge passion for performance improvement.

So my focus is helping departments establish and achieve

their goals through a performance management system where we

solve problems and we continuously improve our processes, which

led me to our surgery team with Cammie.

Oh, wow. That’s wonderful.

So do you focus mainly on surgery, or do you

work in other areas of the business as well?

Yeah, so I started with surgery, but I also

work with billing, clinic, and patient access too.

Nice.

And so tell me, what aspect of surgical

coordination, Cammie, do you love the most, and

what do you find the most difficult?

The thing I like the most about surgery scheduling is

really just helping the patients, making the process as smooth

as possible for them from start to finish.

And, of course, the team aspect, working with

my team, overseeing everything, making sure that the

operations run smoothly on a daily basis. Things

that are difficult, challenges that we have:

having to cancel or reschedule surgeries due to various things,

people not being cleared for surgery or authorizations

not being approved for the surgeries.

So having to kind of work those around and

having to move patients up, fill those spots, keep

the schedules filled, that’s probably the biggest challenge.

Yeah, definitely.

I always say surgical coordination is

unlike other kinds of coordination, because

it’s not like a restaurant reservation.

You can’t just slot someone else in.

They need to know days in advance to stop their meds.

They have to have all the other paperwork in place.

So it’s kind of like a huge juggling act.

Exactly.

Yeah.

And what do you find,

do you have a good story for us about

without sharing any PHI, of course, but a

good story, a good surgical coordination story?

Not a particular story about a particular patient.

However, we were in a very

difficult position as the surgery department

a few years back. Nicole and I got the

opportunity to kind of revamp the whole department, build

a more solid foundation and leadership for that department.

Our utilization was down to probably about 60%

a few years ago, consistently with our facilities

requiring about 70% to 75% utilization.

And with the use of Surgimate, we have been

able to actually up our utilization to consistently 80

plus percent on a monthly basis now.

Oh, wow.

So when you talk about utilization,

you’re referring to block time.

Correct.

Nice.

Yeah.

We were at a point where our facilities were actually

getting ready to start taking block time away from us.

And then when we started with Surgimate

and getting the department reorganized, it actually

has helped us keep those surgeries scheduled

and continue to keep our block time.

And actually, our facilities have started reaching out to us

to ask us to add more block time now.

Oh, nice.

So they’ve developed more confidence in your

business because you’re able to schedule more

intentionally and with higher success rates.

That’s amazing.

Congratulations.

Thank you.

I’m glad to hear it.

Without focusing on Surgimate too much, though,

have you ever kind of noticed that there’s

no formal recognition for surgical coordinators?

Nicole, maybe I’ll take it over to like,

what do you kind of think of that?

Yeah, I did notice that.

I think for our team, it was really

important to highlight our performance and to start

tracking it and sharing it with the team.

So we win as a team, we lose as a team.

Everyone knows where we are on a daily basis, and when

we do reach our goals, then we can celebrate together.

So here at our practice, we

definitely recognize our teammates for that.

Wow, that’s so wonderful.

So you’ve kind of built in a system of

rewarding or recognizing the contribution that the surgical coordinators

have to the success of the practice.

Yeah, definitely.

That’s wonderful.

I always say some people say there are

less, but I say there are about 50

people involved in each surgery from varying degrees.

One person could just be giving you the

sticker when you go for a clearing test

and all the way to the other end,

the surgeon who actually performs the surgery.

There’s one person who’s keeping, holding all

of that together, and that’s the surgical

coordinator, making sure that everything’s done.

The clearances, the auths,

just as you mentioned before Cammie

and I always say there’s about

100 tasks involved in each case.

And if you’re booking, like, 50

cases a month, that’s 5,000 tasks.

Quite a bit.

There’s a lot that goes into each surgery. Definitely.

Yeah.

Do you think that’s right?

Do you think there are about 100

small tasks involved in each case?

From start to finish, I would say so, yes,

like you said, from various

aspects of the whole experience.

Yeah.

When we talk about metrics, we say often 25%

of cases get canceled or rescheduled and in my

mind, when you think about everything that has to

be done, I think that’s a miracle.

But only 25% of them have

to be canceled or rescheduled.

And that’s really because surgical coordinators,

I find, have amazing executive function.

Can you share, I know that

you have great executive function

just because we’re talking today and you’re in this

role, do you want to share any other areas

of your life where that’s really helpful?

Yeah, actually, I can say problem solving.

I’ve kind of advanced my skills in problem

solving, I would say, over the last few

years, especially as becoming a leader.

And I have kind of taken that into my personal

life and my personal relationships and been able to kind

of utilize my new problem-solving skills to kind of

work through issues in my personal relationships too.

Same. I think in my personal life, it’s

really helped me prioritize what’s important and what

needs attention first or what can wait.

So that way I have a little bit more balance too.

Yeah, like the laundry can always wait.

Yes, to a point.

Yeah, that’s my philosophy.

So do either of you have kind of a particular

story about a patient, of course, without sharing any PHI

or some kind of surgical coordination incident that you want

to share with me today?

So I don’t know if we have a particular patient, but

a lot of the time we do have urgent surgeries that

come up from irrigation and debridement where a patient needs to

go in and get an infection cleared out right away.

But we don’t have the block time

available within the time frame the surgeon

is requesting that it be scheduled.

So then we kind of have to work together as a

team and with the facilities to kind of problem solve that

and find a spot for them to go and kind of

work around the doctor’s clinic schedule as well.

So we have to work with basically almost the whole

office staff to figure out where to schedule this patient

in a time frame that is healthy for the patient

and what the surgeon wants as well.

Yeah, there’s nothing like and they always happen

at like, 04:00 just as you’re walking out.

Exactly.

Yeah.

My first job, I was a surgical coordinator, my uncle,

and he always loved doing the add-on at the

end of the day. It was always my favorite.

My father actually worked and was

his practice manager in Australia.

Doctors kind of usually worked solo,

at least back in the 90s.

Now it’s a little different, but there would always be

like a fight would erupt when my dad would be

like, “You can’t add on any more cases. It’s full.”

The patient sitting outside all

like, “What’s going on there?”

And I think kind of as we wrap up, do

you have any thoughts or feelings about how surgical coordination

is going to change in the years coming?

Maybe as you identified, it’s kind of changed.

Surgimate’s changed the way you’ve done it, I

guess, in the last few years.

Do you have any thoughts on what’s coming next?

Hopefully just more efficiency and transparency within

scheduling between the facilities and the offices.

I feel like a lot of the programs are

quite advanced and very user-friendly, so hopefully that

just continues and improves as time goes on.

Agreed.

I think that will continue to see technology advance.

When we have tools like Surgimate that help us

communicate between the facilities, the reps to our patients

and our EHR systems, it just helps us organize

and manage our surgery orders a lot better.

Agreed.

Very nice.

And if there was one thing you could

tell the world that was the hardest part

of surgical coordination, what would it be?

I’m going to stick with determination.

Just keep going, rolling with the

punches and just sticking with it

when you’re faced with obstacles and things become a

little bit more difficult than you expect.

I’m going to say learning from your mistakes

and not being afraid of them. Having that

culture with your team, that you can trust

each other and have a safe environment so

you can focus on continuing your processes together.

Right.

And that’s applicable to any job in healthcare,

in restaurant management, I mean, it doesn’t really

matter what it is that you’re doing.

When you can align with your team and set goals

and fix your processes, that’s a really wonderful thing.

So in Surgical Coordinators Day, we’re building this kind

of awareness around Surgical Coordinators Recognition Day for

all the wonderful work that surgical coordinators throughout

the U.S. do on every single day, including

weekends. It’s always happening.

And so at Surgimate, we just kind of want

to thank you for the time and investment and love

that you’ve given the patients over the years.

And we hope that the patients and the surgeons

and other colleagues continue to recognize you for all

the amazing, caring work that you do.

So thank you very much.

Thanks for meeting with me today.

Thanks for having us.

Thank you so much for having us.

It’s a pleasure.