Constitution Surgery Alliance (CSA) is a leading operator of outpatient surgery centers. Over the past 20 years, CSA has developed 21 surgery centers, including 11 hospital joint ventures, and partnered with more than 500 surgeons and physicians. CSA centers encompass 100-plus operating rooms that complete 100,000+ surgical cases per year. CSA has created a new Surgery Center operating standard called “Co-Operating,” designed to help physicians, hospital systems, surgery centers and patients interact more effectively and efficiently than ever before.
THE CONSTITUTION SURGERY ALLIANCE STORY
CSA: A Story of Well-Planned Growth
As an organization that has grown in both locations and specialties, CSA has moved to a single instance of Envi® to allow supply chain management and oversight at both a corporate level and for individual facilities. Part of the decision to migrate to Envi throughout CSA came from the ability of the solution to integrate with the clinical systems in use in different locations.
Bridging Disparate Systems
Each of the CSA centers had a stand-alone version of the early IOS materials management solution. In addition, many of the centers were using a different clinical system, making it difficult to create a cohesive strategy for order, price and item management.
By migrating to today’s Envi solution, CSA now provides corporate support and oversight of supply chain processes, with the ability of each center to act in a facility-first manner. Through Envi, each has an approved item list, allowing them to place and receive orders directly. When they find a product not on their item list, they can use punch-out capabilities to get what they need.
As new items are identified, the CSA corporate supply chain analyst Andrew Chenail assists with products and pricing, ensuring they’re appropriately vetted, sourced and priced. He leverages Envi to report at both the facility and corporate level, providing visibility to all products and purchasing throughout the system.
Creating a Unique Envi Environment
Each surgery center places orders directly with vendors through Envi using a master list of supplies, with pricing specific to their center. Then, each directly receives supplies and manages inventory onsite.
To add new products, centers call on Chenail, who ensures they are correctly identified, classified and described. “I run a series of checks weekly and monthly, to identify any items that were ‘free-formed’ or punched out, which need to be added to our formulary.” Descriptions had historically been a challenge, as centers customized based on physician preferences. Yet Chenail recognized the importance of standardized descriptions as a key to improved analytics.
“We’ve changed the process to manage descriptions, overcoming unique methods of identification to correctly identify products, eliminate duplicates, ensure best pricing, and most importantly, support accurate analytics. To keep our descriptions consistent, I’m acting as the Envi administrator to add new products. This lets me work with the centers to ensure they have what they need, while providing accuracy and consistency.”
For greater reporting capabilities, Chenail uses an enterprise-wide item master. “Having a collated master list allows apples to apples comparisons and has eliminated most of our data errors,” Chenail said. “We keep everyone on the same product list, which is one of the biggest improvements we’ve made with Envi.”
Envi Best Practice Highlights
- New products are added with consistent identification, classification and descriptions
- Interface with multiple clinical systems, supporting facilities that have moved to Epic, while others remain on previous system
- Multiple, complex service lines require continual analysis of products, vendors and pricing
- Reporting capabilities and visibility across the organization has led to more accurate case costing
- Centers use Envi for bill-only of consignment items like lenses and other implantable devices
Greater Business Intelligence
Chenail summarized the results achieved by the CSA team. “One of the biggest improvements came by combining separate item masters into one for better reporting and visibility. Now we do case costing in a more meaningful way. The individual ASCs can do case costing from their clinical systems, but we also offer integrated case costing from Envi. Envi data assures the pricing is correct, giving us better comparisons amongst all the ASCs and a more centralized view into the business.”
