Earnhart & Associates, Inc.
  1000 Westbank Drive
  Suite 5B
  Austin, Texas 78746

  Phone: 512.320.8580
  Fax: 512.320.8581
  Toll Free: 800.705.1793 

"Culture Change" Agents

The delivery of surgical services is radically different than it was fifteen, ten, and even five years ago.  These multi-million dollar operating room departments are much more competitive, more expensive to operate, and more time consuming than most managers comprehend.  As a result, it is often human nature for members of the management team to resort to how they managed in the past and focusing their attention on the areas they know best; patient care, and employee moral – while their greatest challenge, the surgeons, are walking out their doors by the hundreds. 

The fact that for-profit outpatient surgery centers exist at all is a direct result of hospitals missing the concept of time-efficiency when it comes to their target market – the surgeon.  With over 4,500 surgery centers in existence and 250 current under construction, 100% percent of these centers should be considered missed opportunities for hospitals.  The average operating room managers and directors are typically ill-equipped with the knowledge of cost control, time efficiency, and physician relations to tackle these new management challenges. 

The goal of this education program, or "Cultural Change" is to orient senior level staff to the realities of the business side of healthcare.  

Project Scope 

Earnhart & Associates, Inc. will produce a series of detailed programs that will educate appropriate operating room personnel on how to be competitive in a highly competitive surgery arena.   

Earnhart will work with senior personnel of your organization to develop a curriculum that will address the following areas: 

1.     Physician relationships.

a.       How the surgeon thinks.

b.      What they really are looking for in the operating room.

2.     Cost control.

a.       What do things cost?

b.      How can you cost be reduced without reducing the quality of the patient experience?

3.     What is the impact of the lost of one surgeon to your OR budget?

4.     Establishing benchmarks and applying them in a practical and realistic manner.

5.    How to involve anesthesia into a more efficient surgical department without the need for anesthesia subsidize.

6.    Setting realistic and achievable performance goals for the department.

7.       Incentives for the not-for-profit hospital staff that works.

8.       Learning how to evaluate leadership.

9.      Developing employee core competencies that are meaningful.

10.  Understanding what is meant by “Positive Patient Experience” vs. “Quality of Care.”  

11.  Why we have to care what the surgeon’s motives are in the operating room.

12. Developing a comprehensive, yet, obtainable, physician disciple in regards to surgical start time. 

These are but a few of the topics that will be covered during the year long monthly training sessions.  The faculty will be multi–disciplined and will include an anesthesiologist, an ENT surgeon, an orthopedic surgeon, PACU nurses, OR nurses, business leaders, attorneys, hospital administrators, and other highly experienced personnel of Earnhart & Associates.   

The program will pull no punches in the delivery of the message.  It will focus on practical realities and not theory.  The lectures will be held monthly and allow ample time for questions and answers.  It is our firm belief that when you change the way you look at things – the things you look at change.