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equipment we already owned, minuscule case costs) against facility reimbursement rates ($300 to $400 for
many common cases), and you can see
the service's appeal. Especially as most
interventional procedures are very
QUIET ROOM Because many pain management
patients are uncomfortable on arrival, a separate waiting room from surgical patients can offer comfort.
short in duration, 15 minutes maximum. They didn't even have to take up our
OR time, because they could be done in our procedure room.
To successfully add pain management, however, you must be mindful of a
few scheduling and time management issues. First and foremost, it's imperative
to schedule a sufficient volume of cases to make the service profitable. It's not
likely you'll see much of a bump in your center's net revenues if you're only
hosting 10 pain cases a month. But booking 130 a month, for example, will
make a huge difference. So you'll have to attract physicians who treat pain elsewhere to your facility, or enlist the assistance of a good referral system. Ask
your orthopedic surgeons whom they recommend their patients to for post-op
pain complaints.
Once you have the cases on your schedule, throughput is key. Make sure the
cases are done efficiently and the room is turned over quickly. Many practitioners can conduct 4 patient encounters per hour. Workflow efficiency is a critical
factor in ensuring that your reimbursement outpaces case and labor costs by a
wide margin.
Also, plan ahead to prevent equipment use conflicts. Because our center only
has 1 C-arm, our scheduler marks cases that require fluoroscopic imaging in red.
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