HOW EFFECTIVE PARTNERSHIPS SUPPORT EXCEPTIONAL, COST-EFFECTIVE HEALTHCARE partners like Surgical Solutions create value by helping room, central sterile supply, materials management, systems consolidate and standardize strategic targets. and biomedical engineering. A strategic, collaborative We provide a comprehensive suite of services for preop, approach transforms the health systems we work with intraop, and postop by expertly addressing bottlenecks by limiting errors in the OR and SPD and ensuring that and gaps in service that exist between the operating patients receive the best possible care.” CASE STUDY 1 How Erlanger Health System used strategic partnerships to enable growth ERLANGER HEALTH SYSTEM’S EXPERIENCE highlights competitive, and also investment to keep what we the opportunities that contract partners can create. have running,” says Royer. “One of the errors health- Erlanger is a major institution in Chattanooga, care organizations make is putting all their money into Tennessee. It has over 900 beds across seven hospitals, strategic planning or all into replacement capital. If you including a level 1 trauma center, a children’s hospital, focus on one, you’re dying on the vine on the other.” and two critical access hospitals. It serves more than 800,000 patients annually, while also participating in Second, resources were getting pulled in multiple research and education as an affiliate of the University directions. For example, staff sometimes took respon- of Tennessee College of Medicine in Chattanooga. sibility for fulfilling needs in different surgical areas, which in turn affected workflow. In 2013, the system embarked on a major growth effort. Hospital leadership identified surgery as one strategic After extensive discussion, Erlanger’s leaders decided target. “We wanted to provide as much access to our contract services could help the system achieve its goals. services as possible,” explains Britt Tabor, Executive “Vendors can fill a void in several ways,” says Tabor. “They Vice President and Chief Financial Officer of Erlanger. can add competence or expertise in a new domain, they “An important part of that was offering and supporting can bring in people we might not attract on our own, and procedures that patients needed close to home.” they might have scalability or market access that reduces costs. We had to look at all of the possibilities and see The initiative was led by Adam Royer, Assistant Vice what made the most sense for our specific issues.” President of Surgical Services, who had broad over- sight over quality, strategy, finance, and operations for Erlanger evaluated several vendors and contracted the health system’s 50 operating rooms. Royer’s team with Surgical Solutions, LLC, to offer minimally invasive defined goals around cost, efficiency, and quality. They surgical support services. Surgical Solutions provided had seen steady progress over the past several years a bundled package of technicians, capital equipment but saw opportunities for further improvement. leasing and repairs, and disposable instrumentation. The service included preop room setup, intraop sup- According to Royer, two issues stood out. First, the sur- port, and postop room breakdown as well as instru- gery department faced a dual challenge of maintaining ment inspection, transportation, and decontamination existing capital equipment while simultaneously invest- (in conjunction with the hospital’s sterile processing ing in the future. “It was difficult to balance funding for department). both strategic investment that keeps the organization continues > 6