Overcoming Supply and Implant Cost Pressures with Data w/ Tim Burney

Erik Sunset: [00:00:00] Hello and welcome back. I’m Erik Sunset, your host of the DocBuddy Journal. Here at DocBuddy, we deliver healthcare solutions that take the pain and costs outta broken workflows like with Op Note, which gives ASCs and their affiliated clinics the power of instantly generated operative reports approved from the point of care.

Erik Sunset: You can learn more about those and all of our software solutions at docbuddy.com. And I’m pleased to welcome back Tim Burney, the CEO and founder of Advantien into the DocBuddy journal. Thanks for joining us today, Tim.

Tim Burney: Yeah, thanks, Erik. It’s great to be back.

Erik Sunset: And it’s not just a normal welcome back. I’m welcoming you back as we’re now officially partnered together.

Erik Sunset: So that’s huge news for those in the ASC space. Couldn’t be more excited about that.

Tim Burney: Well, I share that excitement with you. I tell you what this is. It’s just such a natural fit for I think our two teams and I’m excited to more efficiently, more effectively deliver sort of solutions to the ASC space. All of our, all of our partners, all of our customers, I should say [00:01:00] C customers. So looking forward to working with you and partnering with the whole team on the dock buddy side.

Erik Sunset: Oh, same here. And it’s such a natural fit. We’ve talked about this a little bit before recording, but tremendous headwinds for those in facilities across the country, you can hardly retain staff, let alone hire them. And what we both do is remove the burden of these administrative tasks, streamline your operation with a legitimate digital workflow that just hasn’t been available before.

Erik Sunset: So I think that’s really important to point out.

Tim Burney: Yeah, I agree with you. I mean, when you look at the rising, uh, you know, I mean, the, the lower reimbursements that are coming in as reimbursements go down as you look at that, uh, combined with the challenge of ASEs finding employees for us materials managers, right? I mean, They’re challenged to find materials managers.

Tim Burney: So any opportunity that we have, and we focus on this, and I know DocBuddy does too, is, you know, how do we remove a lot of those, uh, sort of everyday tasks that become burdensome, that [00:02:00] pull those people away from, you know, direct patient care and, and we’re both focused on that. And one of the things I’m so excited about this, um, uh, this partnership, like any partnership, you know, foundationally, you gotta kind of have some alignment and, uh, I think for sure, foundationally, we have that alignment.

Tim Burney: You know, we look at. Data analytics is a tool on driving efficiencies, cost savings, et cetera. And, uh, data analytics, AI, et cetera. How do we help those surgery centers, the materials managers, the nurse clinicians, et cetera, the surgeons, um, become more efficient so that they don’t have to Focus on those administrative duties.

Tim Burney: Um, you know that they have up to this point and we’re both aligned in that way. And that’s really exciting. Right? So, um, I’m looking forward to kind of moving that ball forward. The other thing is, you know, we, we, while our offering is focused in the space, uh, it’s not overlapping or redundant. It’s sort of.

Tim Burney: complimentary to each other, right? So that’s exciting as well. So as we talk to our, you [00:03:00] know, A. S. C. Customers, it’s exciting to be able to talk about DocBuddy, you know, and what DocBuddy does, which is an exciting, you know, menu of of of solutions for the A. S. C. Space. So we’re excited about this whole partnership.

Erik Sunset: Yeah, same, same here. Uh, that sentiment is shared from the top to the bottom of DocBuddy. And if you’ll allow me to wax philosophical for just a second here. That you have these ASCs that are forced to do more with less staffing than they’ve ever had. And as you are well aware, and our audience is well aware, the classic healthcare fix is just hire somebody.

Erik Sunset: Throw some FTEs at it. We’ll sort it out manually. It doesn’t matter. We’ll just hire somebody. But now you can’t. You can’t just hire somebody. Um, so that certainly presents a challenge for all of our friends in the ASC. I think it’s more of an opportunity than a challenge because you get the opportunity now that you may not like, you can’t hire, uh, FTEs at will or full time equivalents at will, but now you’re almost forced to look at digital solutions and software that makes a meaningful impact for the facility, where maybe in the [00:04:00] past you would just add head count and, uh, increase your, your salary.

Erik Sunset: Uh, burden or payroll burden for the organization, but now you’re forced to look at different avenues. And I think that’s actually a really positive, despite the short term challenges that may present.

Tim Burney: Well, you know, Erik, yeah, that’s a great point. And, and not only hiring people, but hiring people that maybe have the broad array of talent that is required in a specific, uh, specific role. There’s, I’m not saying there’s, there’s very talented people in the ASC space, but my point is, is, as, as this business becomes, Continues to become more complex, you know, leaning on data.

Tim Burney: How do we get the data? How do we assess the data? What does this data mean? Because at the end of the day, well, you know, people can be afraid of data. It actually makes their jobs easier if it’s used in the right way. Right? Um, you know, And so we look at it as whether you can’t find the right person to hire for a particular job, what’s materials manager, whatever it is, or you need to sort of [00:05:00] fill in some gaps, let’s say, of expertise in certain areas, you know, to be able to do that for the S.

Tim Burney: C. S. Um, is very meaningful, right? I mean, when we work with A. S. C. S. And we talk about data, those those A. S. C. S. We’re not collecting data who don’t know what their data is, don’t know how to analyze it, know what it means are falling way behind. And so this is really an opportunity. I mean, you look at it, these headwinds and yeah, they’re scary, but there’s some solutions.

Tim Burney: And I think both DocBuddy and Advantien and offer those solutions along with other companies who are out there using data analytics. I think that’s where you really drive these solutions. And actually, it’s an opportunity to get better, I think, and it’s an opportunity to get more efficient. And when you look at the different tools that are available to ASCs, if they take advantage of these tools, I’m talking specifically about, you know, how do we collect our data?

Tim Burney: What does it mean? How do we compile it? How do we analyze it? How can we maybe drive better reimbursements based on the data? How can we [00:06:00] identify areas where maybe we drive down costs, things like that? That’s where I think. Uh, the data is so powerful. And so when we look at all these headwinds, they’re scary, but I think there’s solutions out there.

Tim Burney: I know there’s solutions out there that could actually, um, you know, increase the, um, opportunities for ASCs to get better.

Erik Sunset: Big time. Yeah. And obviously we want to have a link in our show notes to our joint press release. We’ll be sure that’s something that you can take a look at. Tim’s got a great quote in there. Our DocBuddy CEO has got a great quote as well. And some, some information about how to learn more, uh, we’ll include in the show notes as well.

Erik Sunset: And I want to turn our eye towards some trends on, uh, in the supply cost space, Tim, you know, we’re, we’re 17 days into Q4 here, and everybody knows the end of the year goes by really quickly once you just about hit Halloween. But I know one of the things our listeners will be keen to hear about is supply cost trends through this year, what you’ve seen on the Advantien side, and maybe even what to expect going into 2025.

Tim Burney: You know, I think [00:07:00] supply costs, like all costs, right, continue to rise. I don’t think there’s any sort of secret in that. Um, you know, you see different numbers on that depends on exactly what you’re talking about. You can go to the extreme, you know, um, uh, you know, uh, When we look at some of the implants that we look at, you know, because the, the, the cases are moving from the hospitals to the surgery centers, that has not driven down the cost.

Tim Burney: You would think the more you use, maybe there’s an opportunity there to drive down the cost and there are, but the reality is, Those supply chain costs continue to go up, whether it’s implants, whether it’s, you know, K wires or drill bits or whatever it is, all those, all those prices continue to go up and don’t really see any end inside.

Tim Burney: I mean, on the device side, device companies are historically have always raised their prices every year. Eight to 10 percent in January. Sometimes, you know, that’ll vary every year, two years, depending upon contracts and things like that. But I think we can expect to continue to see prices go [00:08:00] up. And again, reimbursements are not going up.

Tim Burney: So, you know, that is a challenge for ASCs. And so how do you, you know, how do you deal with that?

Erik Sunset: This might be a little bit of a curveball, but you can’t escape it. We’re obviously in an election year, we’re three weeks away at the time of recording from November 5th, I think that it is. Is there any variance in election year supply cost, changes or trends versus non presidential election years?

Tim Burney: You know, to my knowledge, the answer is no, I wouldn’t be the expert on that, but I will tell you that, you know, historically I don’t see that what I see is a lot of uncertainty, right. And everything. Right. No matter who you talk to, what is this going to mean? And, and I think that’s probably the biggest thing in hesitancy and maybe purchasing capital equipment or whatever the case might be.

Tim Burney: But, um, I, I, I can’t draw a correlation between costs going up or not based on that or more or less, but I can tell you that again, You know, costs are going up as they historically have. And particularly in today’s environment, where all costs are going up, supply chains are [00:09:00] all along the supply chain, uh, suppliers are driving costs up.

Tim Burney: So expect the cost to go up. I mean, that’s just the bottom line, right? It’s just a question of what do you do about it?

Erik Sunset: Yeah, well, that’s a really nice segue. Obviously a lot of headwinds, a lot of uncertainty now, three weeks out from an election. Maybe some hesitancy to act. But with all that in mind, I don’t think that means freeze your spending and don’t do anything. There’s, there’s got to be some type of opportunity baked into, you know, into these challenges and into the uncertainty.

Erik Sunset: So what are you seeing the really high performing surgery centers do despite all of these variables?

Tim Burney: Yeah. Well, I talked about data earlier and I’ll continue to talk about it because it’s it’s such a valuable leveraging tool for A. S. C. S. So as I mentioned a moment ago, as we see more and more, we focus on orthopedic cases mostly, but as we see more and more orthopedic cases going from the hospital to the A.

Tim Burney: S. C. Um, that presents an opportunity, right? So you’re talking about volume, volume going to the ASC. Um, for those [00:10:00] higher performing ASCs, they’re taking advantage of that volume. They’re, they’re looking at their data and they’re talking to their, their surgeons and saying, Hey, listen, are you willing to go either sole source or dual source, for example, to help drive down our implant costs?

Tim Burney: You know, um, we’re going to have these discussions with the reps. Here’s the data to show that. You know, our, our usage is going up. So, you know, we want to see an offset in the cost of our implants. But the key to that is, and what the high performing ASCs do is they look beyond the, their, their PNL and their balance sheets.

Tim Burney: And, and, and in other words, on their PNL, they’ll look, okay, we’re making money or we’re not making, whatever the case might be, they’re doing things. We have, what’s called a profitability roadmap and those ASCs who are using either their own tool or something like the profitability roadmap are looking Per cost or per case costs.

Tim Burney: In other words, you look at the cost per patient. You look at the cost per payer. You look at the cost per procedure, and that is a separate sort of PNL, if you will, right? So it’s a more detailed [00:11:00] PNL that gives you an idea. Number one, you know, you could run the analysis and we do this. We use a I to help us with this with this tool.

Tim Burney: But you run this analysis and you can identify some trends. For example, it might be a surgeon that’s doing, um, a rotator cuff procedure, uh, compared to another surgeon and one surgeon is making money and the other isn’t. Is it the payer? Is it the cost of the implants that they’re using? What is it? And by drilling down at that, if it’s the cost of the implants, then you go to you use that as leverage to go to the Device company and point out, look, we’re losing money on this particular case.

Tim Burney: If you help us by, you know, helping us control our costs on this particular procedure, that will make a difference to us. And it’ll also help us not have to look elsewhere to use some other, you know, device companies, um, you know, uh, uh, implants. So that’s, that is one opportunity to do that. Same with. The same with reimbursements, right?

Tim Burney: I mean, you look at it and maybe it’s consistent with one payer that they’re paying. [00:12:00] I don’t know. I’ll make up numbers. 1000, 2000 less on a particular procedure. And if they were just, you know, reimburse a little bit higher, it would make that procedure more cost effective. And when you think about that, an ASC compared to a hospital, right?

Tim Burney: We all know that an ASC is the place to have a procedure done. If you’re, if you’re a patient, you know, the, the quality of care, the cost, et cetera, is superior to a hospital. So, and the reimbursement. that the payers pay is about a third, you know, about a third of what they pay hospitals. So you would think that payer probably wants to keep that procedure in the ASC.

Tim Burney: So in other words, if the higher performing ASCs are looking at those more detailed numbers to determine where there are opportunities to drive down costs, maybe increased reimbursements by negotiating specifically about specific cases. So at the end of the day, it’s really, again, the high, high performing ASCs.

Tim Burney: are leveraging their, the data that they’re collecting [00:13:00] and they’re doing in a very effective way where you can have meaningful, meaningful conversations with, with the stakeholders, the surgeons, the device companies and the payers to deliver the most cost effective and the best quality patient care.

Erik Sunset: And you, you alluded to this a little bit earlier there around economies of scale, uh, either single source provider, dual source provider for implants and supplies. Um, we had a guest on not too long ago that had a great phrase here that more can scale. You can certainly get economies of scale if you can whittle down your, your supplier list, but something different that doesn’t scale because it’s new.

Erik Sunset: It’s different. Whether that’s a new surgeon or a new procedure that you want to perform at your ASC. What’s the word to the wise there where you’re going to embark on a new type of procedure or with a new surgeon where you don’t, maybe you don’t have data, uh, you don’t have comps yet.

Tim Burney: So I had this conversation actually just yesterday, uh, someone asked me where we have a couple of de novo [00:14:00] surgery centers. Should we wait until we start doing cases where we have volume to then negotiate? Or should we negotiate up front? My answer is negotiate up front. Look, um, there over time, if volume increases to a point where you go, okay, Uh, this price no longer makes sense because we’ve increased volume by whatever, 40 percent or whatever it is, then fine didn’t renegotiate.

Tim Burney: Maybe don’t lock yourself into a long term contract up front, but definitely, definitely negotiate those prices up front. I mean, Look, um, device companies are competitive with one another. There’s a lot of, um, sort of commoditization in the market. Although you, you won’t hear that from the device companies and, and there are specific, uh, implants that are, are unique.

Tim Burney: But having said that, you know, there’s still an opportunity to negotiate. Um, aggressive pricing, even upfront, whether it’s a DeNovo or whether it’s like you just said, Erik, where you’ve got a new surgeon or a new procedure. It’s important to do that upfront. If you don’t, what’s going to happen is you’re going to, and I know [00:15:00] all the people out there who, who run ASCs are involved with ASCs know this.

Tim Burney: You’re going to get some list price or some high price on some implant that’s going to blow you away. And dependent upon your payer, it’s going to matter to your bottom line. So anyway, bottom line is negotiate that upfront. My recommendation would. would be, and I gave this recommendation yesterday, is the let’s get this, this pricing in place up front.

Tim Burney: If your volume increases significantly, we’ll renegotiate the pricing.

Erik Sunset: Yeah, that’s, that’s a, that’s a good word to the wise there. And, you know, you certainly don’t want it to be adversarial. You’re going to be partnering with the vendor, the payer, whoever over the long term, hopefully, and have a great relationship with them. But something as simple as, I think you can sell it to me for less and I’d like you to sell it for me for less is a great way to open that conversation.

Erik Sunset: Okay.

Tim Burney: Yeah. And you know, Erik, I mean, and I didn’t touch on this, but you know, device companies, you know, obviously want your business and, and they’ll be reasonable. I mean, it’s just a matter of sort of, again, I hate to keep throwing this out, but data, right? Keep discussing because even though it might be new, a new [00:16:00] implant or whatever, uh, supply to the, to the A.

Tim Burney: S. C. doesn’t mean it’s new to the market, right? So there’s, there’s numbers out there to sort of support some sort of pricing in almost every case. And the reality is, if you go to the device companies with, you know, a good reasoning why you want to do it, you provide that to the surgeon and you have a good conversation, they, they will partner with you.

Tim Burney: And, and, and, you know, will you come down to the lowest price? Whatever. You’ll come to some price that’s better than what it would have been had you not at least had the discussion. So,

Erik Sunset: You got to ask

Tim Burney: You got to go there.

Erik Sunset: and that that conversation around data is really interesting and I think we touched on this the last time we were on the show together. It depends really heavily on who you ask, uh, with regards to EHR implementation at the surgery center. So more than just your, your practice management, your scheduling, your patient accounts, your billing, but actually having the clinical record, whether that’s, uh, integrated in with your PM from the same vendor or even a separate vendor.

Erik Sunset: Yeah. You know, the, the [00:17:00] vendors say it’s about 50 percent penetration into their PM, their practice management software base that have an EHR as well. My personal opinion is that it’s a little bit lower than that, you know, probably closer to a third or maybe approaching 40 percent because adoption is continuing. This is a really long walk for a short drink of water, Tim, but you’re, you’re mentioning data. You don’t necessarily need to have the EHR and the PM to be collecting the type of data you need to support these pricing conversations with your vendors and with your payers. Do you?

Tim Burney: No, I mean, the, as far as the, uh, let’s talk supplies. I mean, implants specifically, which, which we work with, you know, um, what we do is we collect data from the, from the case on. So we’ve got data and then you, for specific. A. S. C. But then you compare that against benchmarking, right? Um, there’s plenty of benchmarking databases out there.

Tim Burney: We happen to have a very robust one that we compare data that is [00:18:00] coming in, you know, regularly, and we call it weeding the garden. So as up front, you look at what is the historical purchase of what are you purchasing? You know, what are you paying for it? How much you’re using those sorts of things. You throw those variables into an analytics tool, and it basically.

Tim Burney: Not as simple as this, but spits out right, uh, you know, where the opportunities are to drive down costs. How does it, how does it know that? Well, it compares us against some benchmarking, you know, database to determine that. So, um, a lot of the data is out there. You take your internal data and compare it to some external benchmarking data, and it’ll give you a pretty good idea of where you could be.

Tim Burney: Could you be more aggressive? Maybe, but, you know, at least it’ll give you a starting point to start having discussion. So that is a, that is available out there.

Erik Sunset: Well, when, when, when a facility works with, with somebody like a Vantian and your team, you know, there’s sort of three levels to data, uh, at least this is how it’s been explained to me. Yeah. The just raw data. So think about a [00:19:00] big spreadsheet, and we know the from experience, the literacy and even creating pivot table can be really tough.

Erik Sunset: You know, I don’t know how to do that. I’m overwhelmed. There’s too many columns, too many rows, and I just can’t do any of information where maybe somebody is clean that data or you mentioned it weeding the garden. You’ve cleaned it up a little bit. You can start to see. Some trends, but again, not everybody’s capable of either doing that or understanding that, but then that third layer is where everybody can understand it.

Erik Sunset: And that’s insights. So you don’t necessarily need like a data scientist to help you through this process. If you have the right partner to get to those insights.

Tim Burney: Yeah, that’s right. I mean, look, um, it’s, so I struggle with the same things. I mean, I’ve got a person on our team that’s an expert in pivot tables and all that kind of stuff. I, my eyes glaze over as soon as I hear about it because I don’t understand it. I admit it. I just don’t understand it. So for me, if you sit down and start going through all these things and flipping around and that, I kind of get lost at some point.

Tim Burney: Right. And I think a lot of people do. So, um, you know, [00:20:00] For, again, for Advantian and some other companies out there, whether they’re consultants or whatever, um, you know, to automate those things is really important. And again, integration of AI right there is one area where I think AI can be valuable, right?

Tim Burney: To do a cursory, if nothing else, a cursory overview of all of the data that you have. So as I mentioned earlier, a specific P&L tool to analyze specific cases, you know, is an example of that, right? So a tool where you can look at everything, the payers, the surgeons, the patients, and all of that. And then to do, we use AI to do a cursory glance at what are the opportunities here, where, first of all, where are we losing money, where are we making money, Where’s the comparative analysis on, uh, analysis on what it is that’s driving these losses or these gains.

Tim Burney: And then, you know, sitting down and then just looking at that analysis, you know, you don’t have to look at all the numbers until you look at the analysis. And then from there you go back and examine the numbers. So [00:21:00] it could be it could be a daunting task. But you know what? We’ve tried to make it simple.

Tim Burney: I think we have. And I think that, you know, Regardless, you’ve got to leverage the data. You’ve got to look at that. And you asked earlier about high performing ASCs versus others. And that’s really, to me, what I see is the big difference. They understand, I mean, can you imagine doing any business, your business, my business, any business, um, out there outside of medicine, where we don’t understand all of our costs.

Tim Burney: We don’t understand our supply costs. We don’t understand where the money’s coming in. We don’t understand where it’s going out. You would be out of business and unfortunately that happens sometimes with ASCs, but to sort of say, well, we don’t have it and sort of, you know, that’s okay. Well, we all kind of know it’s not okay.

Tim Burney: Right? And, and it’s really not that hard to get into a position where you do understand your data and it frees you up. I mean, the, you know, the, the, the fear of you know, what you don’t know, you can take you under, right? The fear of what you don’t know could be the difference between [00:22:00] making money and not making money on a case or in your ASC or whatever the case might be.

Tim Burney: So having the opportunity to really analyze that and those opportunities are out there, whether it’s with a Bantian or whoever, there’s opportunities out there to analyze data, to, to look at the analytics and to make good business decisions that will actually raise your ASC to, you know, the higher level, and it’s not that difficult to do.

Erik Sunset: No. And what I find really fascinating about this type of analysis is that the longer you have gone between, uh, analytic sessions, I guess, for lack of a better term, the bigger the surprise might be, you know, you’ll have numbers screaming off the page or off the screen at you and you’re going, what? I had no idea.

Erik Sunset: And without the analysis, you would still have never known. But as you get more and more in tune with your data, and it’s not such a long period between reviewing your insights, you know, the surprises lessen. But that doesn’t mean they’re still not there. There’s still opportunity to improve, even if it’s not 50 percent just to make up a [00:23:00] number, maybe it’s only 15%.

Erik Sunset: But that’s still a big difference for an ASC.

Tim Burney: It is a big difference. Absolutely. And I’ll tell you something else. As we look at all of this, it’s really moving manual processes to more automated processes, right? I mean, and there are opportunities. Look at DocBuddy, the things that the processes that you impact that used to be all manual. That took the people away from the administrators, the docs, everybody, the clinicians away from from patient care to focus on things that, you know, are administrative, you know, and you have to focus on administrative things.

Tim Burney: But can you automate those so that, you know, they’re, they’re more user friendly 1, but they also. Instead of taking up that time to do those functions, they’re done for you, right? And all you have to do then is to look at the result. That’s all you have to do really is to look at the result. Um, obviously over time, you have to make sure the data is accurate and that sort of thing.

Tim Burney: But someone else could do that for you as well. But the bottom line is that as we look at these functions, processes around data. It’s [00:24:00] really to me about automating, uh, processes, functions within the A. S. C. Space for the administrators and the clinicians and surgeons to offload all this busy work. And by the way, as I said earlier, it’s really an opportunity.

Tim Burney: It’s an opportunity to say, Hey, It used to be okay to have paper P. O. S. It used to be okay to do all these other sorts of paper. P. O. S. Are fine, but, you know, track it on paper and that sort of thing. But, you know, we really need to get these things centralized. We really need to sort of get into the into the future.

Tim Burney: If you will, where, you know, we, we take advantage of what’s out there. Um, and we, and by the way, at the end of the day, the cost for. for those things really are minimal or or less than having to have your staff take time away from their, you know, their their patient care to deal with these things that would pay overtime or whatever the case might be.

Tim Burney: So there’s solutions out there. And I would say to you that those centers that are that are taking advantage of the automation tools that are available, [00:25:00] um, to them, to collect data, to analyze data, to make good decisions, to offload work from their from their folks. Um, are doing better. They’re they’re more profitable.

Tim Burney: I’ll just say it’s a general statement more profitable and, um, you know, they’re just running a better a better system at their.

Erik Sunset: What I, I want to phrase this the right way, but when, when things could be better, and whether you’re at an ASC or at any other type of business, if things could be better, but they’re not, because you’re not looking at your data, you’re not understanding the mechanics of how you make money, which, you know, we don’t want to lose sight of patient care, but you need to make money to provide patient care.

Erik Sunset: Uh, there. Not as good as they could be because you tolerate them or you turn a blind eye to them and it’s a level of acceptance, uh, somewhere in there. But now with this, we’ve already talked about the staffing shortages and all the headwinds ASCs face. You’re not in a position to tolerate these shortcomings anymore, and how exciting for you that there are data insights, and there are [00:26:00] workflow improvements, that you, having used the new way, whether that’s with Advanti or even an EHR for your ASC, you would never go back to doing things the old way.

Erik Sunset: It would be insane.

Tim Burney: Yeah, that’s right. And, and, you know, the other thing I’ll throw as I was listening to what you just said, which is so true, um, is that. Sometimes there’s the fear of, you know, what does this mean to me or my job? The reality is what we’re talking about really makes your job better, more efficient, right? And what I mean by that, there are people that may feel a bit challenged by what we’re talking about, right?

Tim Burney: Am I going to lose my job as a result of this? The answer is, you know, not because of this, right? Because The reality is what we’re talking about is how do you become more efficient? How do you be able to focus on the patient care? You mentioned cost and patient care around. All of this is obviously patient care, right?

Tim Burney: I mean, we’re all talking about the same thing. How do we, how do we partner with our A. S. C. Customers are partners [00:27:00] and help them become more efficient, cost effective, et cetera, to to deliver the best patient care. Right? How do they deliver the best patient care by being profitable? That is 1 way you do deliver the best patient care.

Tim Burney: You don’t have to cut corners. Not that they would, but you don’t have to do things. not knowing what’s going on. You know, maybe, you know, maybe it frees up some spending that you didn’t know you had or whatever the case might be. But the bottom line is efficiencies actually do and profitability actually does drive better patient care for many different reasons.

Erik Sunset: And to go back to something you said a little bit ago around using AI to deliver some of the insights. Um, I want to hear a little bit more about that. What are some of those screaming off the page sort of weed the garden AI first pass into data that you’ve seen for clients?

Tim Burney: Yeah. Well, so, you know, the weeding the garden, what I mean by that is it’s a, it’s an ongoing process, right? So if you, if we look at data up front and we go, well, okay, here, based on your data, uh, and what you use here, your opportunities for savings, right? But ongoing, you [00:28:00] know, the, some of those prices can fall out either a rep makes a mistake and enters a wrong price or brings in a new product.

Tim Burney: You mentioned earlier, right? That wasn’t approved or wasn’t, uh, that get a pricing approval up front. type of thing that falls out. That’s what I’m talking about with weeding the garden. But, you know, when, when we, when we look at these things ongoing, what, what AI, when, when I mentioned AI for us, we, we use the profitability tool to assess, as I mentioned, each case that’s done in that center.

Tim Burney: Um, and that comes through central invoicing, which, you know, which is an important part of this too, where we collect all the data. But by having all that data, you build these individual P and L’s for all the cases. Uh, the AI then identifies, as I said earlier, Hey, this payer for this particular case with this particular procedure and surgeon, you’re losing money in this, when you’re making money.

Tim Burney: So it identifies those sort of areas. And by the way, we don’t, at Advantian, uh, we don’t just lean on the [00:29:00] AI as the end all be all, but it is a very effective, efficient tool to give us a sort of Idea of what’s going on. And then we look at it. Humans look at it to make sure. Hey, does this really check? And it’s surprising how much it actually does.

Tim Burney: It’s almost scary how much it does. But nevertheless, we make sure that those that analysis those those summaries are accurate, but it gives you a real view of opportunities. As I said earlier, to look at can we talk to the payer and maybe negotiate for these particular procedures and increase in reimbursement.

Tim Burney: Can we talk to the device company and talk about for this particular implant, maybe a decrease in costs so that we can do these cases here. And, and, um, our experience is, uh, and it varies, but our experience, um, is that you’ll have a willing office or a willing audience, excuse me, to listen to you because.

Tim Burney: You know, after all, the ASC’s health is also, you know, to their health and their business as well. So they want, they want to do right by the [00:30:00] ASC.

Erik Sunset: What I’m curious on this point, Tim, I know it’s practical and you could technically achieve that individualized case P& L if you had somebody that could work on it long enough. What’s the manpower, the time savings that the AI tool delivers that maybe an ASC could never do that, not having the people?

Tim Burney: Yeah. So good question. So the compiling the information to make sure that it’s accurate is one piece, right? There’s fixed and, and variable costs that you’ve got to look at. A lot of that is in the ASC’s P& L. Um, and then that, which isn’t in there, for example, implant costs may be in the HST or the, or, or one of the other CIS or something in one of those databases.

Tim Burney: Or we may have it in our database if you’re a customer, but we we put all that information and for us, we do it, but A. S. C. could do it. You know, they just have to make sure that they’re pulling all that information, um, into a separate sort of. database, a case costing, [00:31:00] a profitability roadmap, sort of database where they compile it all together.

Tim Burney: Um, and then from there, you know, that, that’s where all of it begins, right? You, the numbers are crunched. So AI, what AI does is it just shortens the time to analyze all that information, right? You mentioned earlier, you know, Excel or whatever that takes a long time, right? You can do all the stuff that I don’t know how to do, um, that, that experts do and come up with that.

Tim Burney: But I happen to know, and you know. That it takes hours, days to do that. What AI does is it shortens that time to minutes. And as I said earlier, then we can go in and look at that and spend an hour or two and confirm whatever the AI has to say about that. Right? So the reality is, I mean, an ASC can do it.

Tim Burney: They can do it on their own. No doubt about it. It’ll take a little longer, a little more manpower and that sort of thing. But A. S. C. S. Can do that without A. I. You know, um, and so either way, we just find it just saves us time. That’s the bottom line for us. And it’s pretty, [00:32:00] it’s pretty accurate. But we verify that.

Erik Sunset: Uh, and I would imagine that if you’re doing them on a, on a monthly basis for the preceding months cases, that’s probably a week’s worth of work. And you start on Monday, it’ll be done on Friday if you don’t work on it every second of the day, and then by the way, you’ve got another month’s worth of cases coming in a week or 10 days.

Erik Sunset: It just, it sounds impractical.

Tim Burney: Yeah, it’s hard. It’s very hard for ASCs to do it on their own, but they can, you know, and I would say to you that the hardest part is getting the initial sort of download of data, right? Because making sure everything’s correct and from there, you know, you sort of, you, you, you build in some things, you only have to go back a month or a quarter or whatever the case might be, you know, that’s an area where we collect data on an every case, uh, procedure.

Tim Burney: So ours is constantly updating and so it doesn’t require that intense, uh, labor. time, you know, that you’re talking about. So it depends on what you choose, but you can do it on your own. Certainly we do it and we update it constantly, which is a real, real benefit. So it just depends on how you want to do it.

Erik Sunset: I gotcha. And on, on the topic of ai, just sort [00:33:00] of in general for healthcare, what are you most excited about? What are you seeing?

Tim Burney: You know, I, I’m honestly excited about, well, a lot of things, you know, I sit around with my team a lot and, and, um, you know, I do a lot of pie in the sky stuff, and I know they get frustrated with it because I don’t know anything about AI, For what I see, you know, and checking my emails, see if I could write an email better or something, you know, whatever the case might be.

Tim Burney: And I always do write an email better with AI than I do on my own. So that’s kind of scary. But, you know, as I said, the analytics part of it to me, uh, because I see it in action every, you know, not every day, but as we use it, I see it in action and it’s very, very, Very effective. I mean, I know at DocBuddy, you know, you, you know, you have some use for AI and, and, um, you know, I think there are spots where it fits.

Tim Burney: I don’t know, you know, long term, you sort of look at it. And as I talk to people, there are people who, you know, are coming around to it. I’m just one of those people that, you know, sort of. Sees it and watches, you know, different things taking place. My experiences, I told you with our profitability tool and it works.[00:34:00]

Tim Burney: Um, but you know, beyond that, it’s sort of, for me, it’s sort of, how could we use this? And I’m seeing healthcare. I mean, you see, you see more and more in healthcare, inventory management, um, tools, all sorts of different things that, uh, AI is applicable, um, you know, but I’m a guy that just sort of dreams about things quite frankly.

Tim Burney: And then I leave it up to the people that know more about it to tell me You know why we can or can’t do it. Um, I think over time though, it’s become an integral part of health care. I really do. Don’t you?

Erik Sunset: Yeah, I do. And I think it’s been interesting to see healthcare embrace it with open arms. Now there’s, you talk about pie in the sky, there are some big time dreamers that are predicting at some point in the future, which from my point of view, it’d be a really long time away. The outright replacement of providers.

Erik Sunset: I’m not sure I agree with that. Um, I would view it more sort of in the, the cliche sense now at the end of 2024, the AI is there to help workers, whether you’re a doctor or guys like us or whatever. Um, it’s not going to replace people, [00:35:00] but those that refuse to adapt AI into their workflows where it can save them time and give them efficiency.

Erik Sunset: They’ll be replaced just because they don’t perform as well as everybody else using AI.

Tim Burney: Yeah. I agree with that for sure. You know, um, it’s like I said earlier, you know, uh, fear of the change, um, I think is, is, is way overplayed in most people’s minds because I think used Appropriately and properly in my mind, uh, kind of like our business and sort of supporting ASCs in their implant business, get good prices, et cetera, is really just to kind of remove as we talked about a couple of times, both teams, right?

Tim Burney: DocBuddy and advantage. And how do we, how do we take away those barriers? burdensome duties that you do every day that just take you away from patient care. And I think I and other things could help do that right can help achieve those things. I don’t think it will replace people either. People replace themselves if they don’t do their job or inefficient, etcetera, as you mentioned.

Tim Burney: But I think that the bottom line [00:36:00] is that you know what we’re talking about. It really is. How do we enhance The delivery of, of patient care. How do we, you know, how do we make this more profitable, less costly, more efficient across the board? And to me, to me, ideally, that’s what AI is. I don’t know where it’s going to go.

Tim Burney: Of course, neither one of us do, but to me, that is the use for AI. And that’s what I look for. for within, for example, our business and the ASC spaces, how do we utilize these different tools to make us more efficient, to make our partners more efficient so that they can do the things we talk about, focus on patient care and, and, uh, be more efficient, make more money, et cetera.

Tim Burney: So that’s where I see it.

Erik Sunset: I’m with you wholeheartedly, and I’ll add just one thing, that right now the state of the art, like really the decision you have to make, and I see people on both sides of this where they’re kind of, they’re skeptical, they don’t want to touch it, and then I see the other end where people want as much AI as they can get, where maybe you don’t actually need it, but right now the trade off you have to keep in mind is if I use this AI tool for whatever process I’m [00:37:00] completing, will it take me more time to do it myself?

Erik Sunset: And I know that the output is going to be right, or will it take more time to review the AI generated outputs? And that’s the balance, which one is more time saving, which one’s more effective for me or requires less brainpower. Like you mentioned, writing emails end of the day, maybe it’s late. You want to get to inboxes Euro or whatever your number is like, man, I, Hey, I whip me up a reply on this one.

Erik Sunset: It’s going to take me longer to type it. Cause I’m already brain dead from the day. So that that’s the balance. I think people are starting to see, and as it improves, as AI gets better and these models get more accurate in their outputs, The balance is going to differ there. I don’t know what that balance will be in the future state, but we’re not there

Tim Burney: We’re so early in this thing, you know, it’s going to be fun. I think I, I’m excited about it just because I, I like new things and I like new things that drive efficiencies, et cetera. And I see this as one of those, one of those solutions, you know, I’m sure there’ll be starts and stops in different areas and that sort of thing, but I’m really excited for healthcare because.

Tim Burney: You [00:38:00] know, whether it’s AI data analytics and AI, I think, are the are the combination there to help drive the things we’re talking about, make it better for everybody in the ASC space, you know, make it better for the people that work there, make their lives happier, you know, just, you know, all those sorts of things, you know, you know, happy sounds like, yeah, whatever.

Tim Burney: No, it’s real. I mean, you know, you know how it is. You go to work and you’re, you’re. You’re, you know, you’re not looking at, Oh my God, I gotta do all this stuff that has nothing to do with what I was trained to do. I’m a nurse, I’m a doctor. I’m a, you know, materials manager, um, to be able to offload that really does make a mental difference.

Tim Burney: I, I see it all the time. I mean, for those, for our customers who don’t have to deal with a lot of things they had to deal with before that we’ve offloaded for them, it’s meaningful. And I think AI is a way to make that happen. You know, you nor I know exactly where it’s going to go, obviously, but, you know, I think there’s a lot of opportunity to be a lot of fun watching it as, as we kind of move through this.

Erik Sunset: yet. Yeah, I’ve got, I’ve got my popcorn ready. And I do know one place [00:39:00] where, where Advantian is going in the coming weeks, which is the Ohio, uh, state association of ASCs. That’s in a couple of weeks, if I’m not mistaken. Uh, DocBuddy won’t be at that one, but you can find us on sort of the flip side of this.

Erik Sunset: We’ll be at Becker’s ASC and the Washington, uh, ASC show coming up. So you got a couple of opportunities to meet the Avantian and DocBuddy teams before the end of the year, before the end of trade show season. I expect everybody attending those and managing those. We’ll be glad that 2024 is in the books and, uh, just a couple of short weeks.

Tim Burney: Yeah, for sure. You know, I’m from just a little aside. I’m, I grew up in Ohio, uh, Lancaster, Ohio to be exact, uh, 30 miles Southeast of Columbus. And, uh, um, gosh, I actually was there a couple of years ago just for a quick meeting, but haven’t spent much time back there, have a lot of fun memories. High as a beautiful place.

Tim Burney: And we’re certainly looking forward to spending some time there. There’s some, there’s some real opportunities, I think, uh, to kind of have some good discussions around that. Yeah. And anybody that happens to be at that, [00:40:00] uh, uh, conference, please stop by and see us and, uh, you know, and Becker’s, as you said, you’ll be there.

Tim Burney: That’s a big one. That’s always a fun one to attend. So, uh, yeah, good opportunity there. We’d love to see anybody happens to stop by.

Erik Sunset: Yep. Find us on the show floors of those events. And if you’re not traveling through the rest of the year, Tim, where can folks connect with you online?

Tim Burney: Yeah, well, www. advantin. com is a good place to sort of, um, well, it, it gives an overview of what we do. I mean, we’ll detail some areas. I talked about the, uh, the profitability roadmap. There’s a real nice, um, uh, video on there, 10 minute video, uh, that kind of walks through that, uh, at how it works. And there’s some other things on there about RFP processes and some other things that, That, uh, we offer that love to have people visit there.

Tim Burney: Um, my, my personal email, feel free to reach out to me, t bernie@advantan.com. That’s A-D-V-A-N-T-I-E n.com. I’d love to hear from anybody if you have any questions. Um, you know, we’d, we’d love to, we’d love [00:41:00] to, you know, talk to you.

Erik Sunset: We’ll get all of those links into the show notes as usual. And on behalf of the entire DocBuddy team, I want to thank you for listening. Tim, thank you for joining us and

Tim Burney: It’s, it’s always fun to, fun to sit and chat with you.

Erik Sunset: you get a standing invite. Come back anytime.

Tim Burney: buddy. Appreciate it.

Erik Sunset: And until then audience, be sure you’re subscribed on Apple podcasts, Spotify, and YouTube.

Erik Sunset: So you always get the newest episodes of the show. And until then we’ll talk to you next time. I’m your host, Erik.