Image by Mohamed Hassan from PixabayBend Surgery Center has steadily grown over the years, making a name for itself in the ambulatory surgery center (ASC) industry. A big part of its success has been its organizational culture and commitment to excellence, according to administrator Todd Currier.
Founded in the late 1990s, Bend Surgery Center has expanded from relatively modest beginnings to become a roughly 44,00-square-foot multi-specialty ASC with several operating rooms. Today, the surgery center has a patient volume of over 16,000 cases annually, with expectations to surpass 20,000 in the near future.
Ambulatory Surgery Center News recently caught up with Currier to learn about Bend’s growth and how it has invested in its culture over the years. During the conversation, Currier discussed competing with hospitals for staff, keys to retention, Bend’s future plans and more.
Highlights from the conversation are below, edited for length and clarity.
ASC News: To start, can you tell me a little bit about Bend Surgery Center? Where is it based? What types of procedures take place at Bend
Currier: Our center originated in 1997 as a two operating room (OR), one procedure room center that was about 5,200 square feet. We expanded in 2005 to four ORs, three procedure rooms – about 22,000 square feet. Then, we expanded again in 2022 to eight ORs and six procedure rooms – over 44,000 square feet.
We are a multi-specialty center doing over 16,000 cases per year, expecting to get over 20,000 in coming years. We provide over 12 different specialties, including ortho, spine, GI, ophtho, ENT, general, urology, gynecology, pain, dentistry and plastics.
And how long have you been with the ASC? Tell me a little bit about yourself, please.
I have been here as administrator since 2021, and this is actually my second stint here. Previously, I worked as Bend’s accountant/CFO, from about 2005 to 2010.
In 2010, I moved to Wyoming to become an administrator of a multi-specialty center, then to Montana to open a new de novo center. My work history prior to becoming involved with ASCs was as a certified public accountant, with a focus area within health care.
Ambulatory surgery centers became a major focus for me, as I believed in the strong focus of delivering high-quality care at an efficient price. ASCs play such a major part in affordable health care, I knew it was an area that I wanted to be involved in.
How would you describe the culture at Bend Surgery Center, and what makes it unique?
Our culture has always been one focused around a trinity of excellence in providing the highest level of care to our patients, allowing for a great environment for our physicians to create a center focused on quality of care, and providing the staff with the resources, education and experience to thrive in their delivery of care for our community.
We work throughout the year on a variety of ways to engage with our staff. We recognize all the different specialties and services through initiatives like Nurses Week, Tech Week, EVS Week, Administrative and Business Office Week, etc. We have after-hours events, and we encourage our physicians to join in, such as Summer Family BBQ, Minor League Baseball Game Night, and Bowling Night, for example.
Our leadership team celebrates Thankful Thursdays in the month of August. During the month – coinciding with ASCA’s National ASC Month – our Leaders provide a different way to say “thank you to our staff.” We make or serve BBQ lunch. We have ice cream sundaes, snacks, games, gifts and more.
We educate our staff on the patient experience, and how they are such an integral part of providing such an important part of care within our community. No matter their role within the center, clinical or not, they are providing care to our patients.
What core values guide the operations and interactions at Bend Surgery Center?
A few years ago for our 25th anniversary, we worked with our staff to develop and redefine our core values moving forward. This process heavily engaged our staff and physicians to define our center and the values we hold dear: quality, culture, community and balance. Each of those values are shared with our staff. They’re part of our recruiting process to ensure we bring in people who understand and can embrace what we have created and believe in.
How did you come up with those core values?
We had one of those trifold boards, and we had three questions on that board for staff to put sticky notes on. And so during their breaks and lunches, they would take the time and add to it. We had somebody from our leadership team usually in there, you know, explaining the process to them. And within a week’s time, our board was filled up.
We asked three questions: What makes Bend Surgery Center what it is? What makes Bend Surgery Center unique? And what would you miss about working here? We took everybody’s answers, then put them into a word cloud to visually see what words were sticking out more so than others. If I look at the board, some of the words or phrases I see are “work-life balance,” “co-workers” and “the people.” Others are “camaraderie,” “amazing people,” “leadership support” and “community.” Lot of words about community.
What strategies has Bend Surgery Center implemented to attract top talent in the ambulatory surgery center space?
We encourage an atmosphere of excellence through education and knowledge of our staff. With that, we hire both experienced and also newer graduates to help fill our positions.
We encourage our staff to seek out peers in other facilities that may meet or display our culture of excellence. We push our staff to one level of excellence and to work with each other to ensure everyone succeeds on a given day. Our success is celebrated collaboratively versus individually.
In your recruitment process, how do you ensure a good fit between candidates and the culture that you’ve built at Bend Surgery Center?
We typically have potential new hires come to shadow our staff to observe our daily processes.
We utilize our current staff members in the evaluation process for new staff and encourage a strong interaction and dialogue with the candidates to ensure a proper fit that helps ensure we obtain quality new members of our team.
You obviously do a lot of really cool activities, and you’re investing in making sure the culture is a collaborative one, that people feel connected. How unique is that in the ASC space?
I think a lot of ASCs provide a lot of staff benefits, a lot of staff-engagement activities. I think we may go to more of an extreme, but I would say that my colleagues and peers generally try to do something special for their staff on a routine basis.
I think that’s the beauty of ASCs. You have that smaller family-type of environment, where people like to engage with each other.
What role do competitive salaries and benefits play in attracting and retaining employees at your center? Is that a piece of the puzzle, or the vast majority of the puzzle itself?
Compensation is always a major part of attracting new talent. However, the atmosphere, culture and overall benefits of having a strong organization that values its staff speaks volumes as well.
Just like many ASCs, we cannot compete head to head with our local hospital in regards to wages. But, remaining relatively close, having a good benefits package, creating a strong working culture and showing how we value our staff helps eliminate a strictly dollars approach to our hiring process.
We talked about attracting talent, but let’s dive deeper into the other part of the equation: retention. Can you share some specific examples of successful retention initiatives you’ve implemented?
Retention can be so undervalued, but at Bend Surgery Center, we are very proud with our retention of staff. At the end of the day, some staff will need to chase the dollar, although they recognize they will be sacrificing the culture, camaraderie and education they will be getting by staying. But our retention has remained high as we continue to work on ways to value our staff.
How does Bend Surgery Center address the unique challenges of retaining clinical staff, such as surgeons and nurses?
We do not employ our surgeons, but we keep their case volumes through active engagement and staff working closely with them to make their days highly efficient. We have worked very hard over the years to create an atmosphere with our clinical teams that values a work-life balance. In addition, we have moved some staff to a coordinator or lead-level position that provides a higher level of responsibility over a service line or area within the center.
What career development opportunities do you offer to help retain employees and foster their growth?
We do offer incentivized pay for those staff that have become certified or hold a higher educational degree. In addition, we have a robust training program that encourages our staff to support and train their fellow peers, so that everyone is maintaining the same high-quality and excellent care we expect from our staff.
How has employee turnover changed over the past few years, and what factors have influenced these changes?
Turnover was a greater issue during the pandemic as staff left for a variety of reasons. However, in recent years, we have not had an issue with turnover, and I credit that to the positive nature of our workforce and family attitude of our staff.
What role does leadership play in maintaining and enhancing the culture at your center?
Management needs to push the culture of the center and keep focused on the established values that have been created. Management should always be open to listening to areas where negativity may start to creep in and take action.
An open-door policy and communication with staff is vital to maintaining management’s integrity and transparency within the center.
What advice would you have for a fellow ASC administrator who is maybe coming from an ASC where culture certainly can be improved? What’s a good Step 1 for kind of turning things around or strengthening culture, so to speak?
You need to make sure you have strong support from your physician leaders, so that you have that backing behind you.
And they need to have a good understanding of what a strong culture within your center does. It provides that additional quality and excellence that we can provide to our patients. It provides those additional services that we give to the physicians themselves to make their days go better. When we have turnover and internal strife within your organization, the days do not go well.
You have to have it – a strong culture.
How do you see the culture at Bend Surgery Center evolving in the next five years, and what steps are you taking to shape that future?
Culture and respect will be at the forefront over the coming years as we will not be able to compete with wages paid at hospitals. I see Bend Surgery Center continuing to modify our benefits package, our traditional staffing models, and how we adjust to less than full-time staffing.
A work-life balance is critical with our future workforce, and we will need to find ways to adjust accordingly.
Then to wrap up, what plans, priorities or goals do you have as Bend’s administrator, looking at the reminder of 2024? You can speak to the focus of the interview thus far – workforce and building a culture of excellence – or something different that’s also of critical importance to you.
The remainder of 2024 will be focused on further expansion of services and addition of new providers. We have some remodel/construction projects to get done as well.
We will continue our focus on culture and push toward excellence. A favorite quote of mine from Vince Lombardi is, “Perfection is not attainable, but if we chase perfection, we can catch excellence.”
