Breaking the Technology Trap in Surgery Centers

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Erik Sunset: Hey folks. Good morning. Hello. Welcome back. My name is Erik Sunset. I’m your host of the DocBuddy Journal. If this is your first time watching or listening to the show, I’m so glad you’re here. Welcome. If you’re a long time listener, welcome back. Still glad you’re here too. Uh, today is March 12th, 2026, and we are going to do a little bit of housekeeping and then we’re gonna talk about an upcoming webinar that we’re gonna talk about where you can see us next.

Erik Sunset: Um, then I’ve got a couple of thoughts on op note for you. Um, that won’t be too much of a surprise, uh, a little bit of a different angle today. But for our housekeeping, I am unexpectedly doing a solo show. We had two guests scheduled to record with us this week, and unfortunately, these, uh, these dates as the, as the calendar shook out, we ended up not having a great match.

Erik Sunset: Uh, so you’re stuck with just me [00:01:00] for this week, but we have some really cool guests coming up. One’s a return guest and then one will be a first time, uh, podcast guest. But a great guy, longtime op note user at his facility. And, uh, you’re gonna have a lot of fun with both of those conversations. So hang tight.

Erik Sunset: Like I said, bear with me. You got, you got just me for today. But we will, uh, we are at the mercy of calendars that are, that are in quite a bit of flux to get our guests onto the show. So no big deal. And then, uh, upcoming webinar. Yes, that’s right. And uh, more prepared hosts would have the date right in front of ’em so they could just read it off.

Erik Sunset: Um, and I can do my best impression of prepared host here that our next op note webinar is going to be on Wednesday, March 25th, and we will get you some details on an invite link and, um, where you can sign up to join the [00:02:00] show here shortly. So again, that’s the next op note webinar on Wednesday, March 25th.

Erik Sunset: Um, I’m thinking that’s gonna be at 3:30 PM Eastern. But, uh, TBD keep an eye on your, on your inboxes. Keep an eye on Doc, buddy Social on LinkedIn. And then, uh, uh, obviously our website as well. So there you go. And then our roadshow is gonna be kicking off here relatively soon. That’s right. Uh, the DocBuddy roadshow is going to start by participating in supporting the SCA Health Annual Leadership meeting.

Erik Sunset: That’s the ALM or the A LM, if you will. Um, and that’s just a couple of weeks away. So we’re looking forward to that. We’ll be on the road again with, um, with Surgery Partners, leadership meeting, and then on to asca and then sort of our regularly scheduled state association programming along with visiting our friends at Becker’s.

Erik Sunset: Um, and that’ll be that. So we’re looking, looking forward to that. Getting, uh, excited to see everybody in the field. [00:03:00] Uh, the SCA alm, the a LM is gonna be a fun one. It’s at, uh, it’s at Resorts World, Las Vegas. And, uh, for everybody in the colder climates. Hopefully that’ll be a little bit of a reprieve for you, uh, temperature wise.

Erik Sunset: Yeah. Las Vegas already in the eighties. Uh, kind of similar to Miami. It’s, it’s hotter on the thermometer out there in Las Vegas. Uh, for the highs, uh, anyway, the lows are pretty low, 80 high of 82, low 53. Um, you know, this time of year, so in any case that you didn’t come here for the Las Vegas Weather Report.

Erik Sunset: Uh, but we’re looking forward to seeing all of our SCA friends and family, um, and the one world surgery folks in Las Vegas. And then I, I promise you a little bit of an op note anecdote too. Uh, so this is a dynamic that we run into on occasion, um, and it’s a refreshing dynamic for me with, uh, the background in electronic health records, software sales, as you know, with an EHR.

Erik Sunset: There isn’t [00:04:00] really an ability for a practice or a surgery center or a hospital, uh, department to say, I want some of our physicians using your software. And then there’s a couple other holdouts that, uh, they’re gonna be using a different. Like in EHR land, that doesn’t work. There’s a lot of reasons that doesn’t work.

Erik Sunset: And a primary reason is around the, uh, the EDI setup, like the billing setup. There, there technically there’s a way you could make it work. It’s a hassle. Um, but the point is you can’t really mix and match EHR solutions with it under the same tax id. Right. Like there’s, there’s a lot of, uh, implications there.

Erik Sunset: So that’s, uh, a long walk for the short drink of water. That with op notes. As you know, DocBuddy op note is the replacement for outdated transcription workflows. It gives you instant operative reports. There’s a revenue cycle uplift for days to bill, um, as well as, um. The [00:05:00] integrity of your claims for unbundled claims.

Erik Sunset: Uh, revenue capture, charge capture, that’s what I’m looking for. Um, and then there’s a labor cost uplift as well. And an uplift in this case means that you’re using less labor, uh, in a manual process. So those are three good things. Incident op reports, revenue cycle uplift, and then a, a decrease in labor cost, uh, for your op report supply chain.

Erik Sunset: And as you know, and as I hope you know, uh, this is a replacement for transcription, like we said, and when you have a facility and especially the larger facilities where there is a wide variety of specialties, of surgeons, of personalities, of ages. ’cause you know, there, there is a demographic aspect to this as well.

Erik Sunset: And you know what, I don’t, I don’t fault ’em. If you’re a surgeon that is nearing retirement, you know, in the immediate future, not a couple years out, but in the immediate future. I know I wouldn’t be looking to change, um, a workflow, like if I’m at the doorstep of [00:06:00] retirement, like I totally get that. So we’re, we’re holding them out of this discussion, but if you’re a surgeon and you are maybe wary of new solutions and new services, hard to blame you there too with what CMS did with, uh, meaningful use and later macro mips.

Erik Sunset: Like, I don’t. I’m not sure that I blame you for being wary of new solutions, but the point of all this, I’m rambling a little bit, is when we talk to a larger facility, the facility CEO or the facility administrator may say, Hey, I’ve got a group of surgeons that is gung-ho for the better mousetrap. You doc, buddy, you’ve got the better mouse trap.

Erik Sunset: So I have this proportion, this subset of all of my surgeons that are ready to use you today, but I have this other subset of surgeons. That are either gonna wait to see how it goes. They don’t wanna make a change. I don’t see them that often. I mean, we’ve, we’ve heard it all and we’re able to accommodate any, any scenario.

Erik Sunset: But the question we get where there’s some [00:07:00] proportion of surgeons that are ready for DocBuddy and some other subset that aren’t the administrator of the surgery center comes to us and they’re usually like a little apologetic. Like, Hey, you know, I don’t have everybody on board. Is that gonna be a problem?

Erik Sunset: And I think that they’re thinking of this through the EHR lens, where it’s like either all or nothing. And that’s the really cool thing about DocBuddy op note is that it doesn’t have to be all or nothing. Now the, the vast majority of our implementations are, uh, standardization across the full facility.

Erik Sunset: There’s too many good reasons not to do that. Uh, and you know, I, I might be biased there, um, but. In certain scenarios, there might be some internal politicking, there may be some logistical hurdles, you know, whatever the case may be. But what ends up happening is we can start with just a subset of the total surgeon roster, some of it, all of it, you know, whatever.

Erik Sunset: It doesn’t matter to us. We can actually get them started with op note. And you know, what ends up happening is [00:08:00] that their colleagues, their surgeon, colleagues and peers see the op note users using op note, and they’re seeing just how, uh, frictionless it is. And they end up raising their hand and going, Hey, you know, my fault.

Erik Sunset: I should have said yes when everybody else said Yes, but can I have it now? And the answer of course is yes, but that’s just a, a big piece of flexibility with DocBuddy, that it’s not necessarily, it doesn’t have to be binary that all the surgeons start using it all at once or none of them do that.

Erik Sunset: That’s not the case at all. Um, and that’s very unlike sort of your legacy, your legacy softwares, and I’m looking at you EHR, where you gotta get everybody on board with that. And that makes decision making processes, uh, potentially brutal. Where you have big committees and you have the board weighing in on a software choice, uh, for pm EHR software.

Erik Sunset: You might even have an instance of like, um, patient financing, you know, decisions like that where it’s either [00:09:00] everybody or nobody. And that’s okay. And sometimes that’s, sometimes that is the right thing, uh, the right thing for the customer and the right thing for the vendor, right? Like we can all appreciate that.

Erik Sunset: Um, but again, to reiterate. With DocBuddy and with Op note, you know, we can get granular. It can be surgeon by surgeon, and again, when once one surgeon is using OP note at a facility, and this holds true for all of our solutions. As a matter of fact, whether it’s enterprise or AI notes or enterprise ai, once one physician starts to use it.

Erik Sunset: Generally, and you know, we’ve got a great track record of this. So by generally, I mean every time, generally everybody else latches onto it, you know, within like 90 days. It’s too fast, it’s too easy, it’s too slick. I mean, we’ve talked about this before. The surgery center is so critically underserved with, uh, with good technology and that isn’t just to point fingers at, at [00:10:00] vendors and software shops.

Erik Sunset: It’s also your fault out there in surgery center land that you haven’t had a real good reason to be shopping for meaningful tech. Uh, yet. You know, over the last couple years you have come out the other end of COVID Staffing crisis. Yada, yada, yada. Um, I think this is conjecture. I think someday CMS is gonna insist on an EHR.

Erik Sunset: I just, I don’t see how they remove all of these procedures and codes off the IPO list, uh, for, uh, uh, doing them in the ASC. And they don’t expect anything back. Like, that’s not really the way of the world. Uh, but to get back to our, our central point here, there has been a, a lack of great tech for ASCs.

Erik Sunset: Um, you’re able to get that now across a variety of workflows and disciplines and, and business processes. So you’ve got options, but you also have to embrace it too, like at the surgery center. Um, similar to that, that panel [00:11:00] of surgeons that’s just about to retire. Like do, do we fault ’em for not wanting to change what they’re doing when retirement is like within arm’s reach, like of course not, you know, what would you do?

Erik Sunset: We’re people, you know, we’re normal people just like you are. That that just doesn’t make sense to disrupt a process that is about to conclude like, like a career is about to end. So that, that makes total sense. But the ASC administrators, you’re, you’re also in the same boat. Uh, where there are a great, there’s a large cohort of folks that are, you know, maybe starting to think about retirement, not at the cusp of retirement, but starting to think about it.

Erik Sunset: Um, but you know, you still have a fiduciary duty to the surgery center to do the right thing for the business, for your partners. Maybe there’s a management company involved. Um, so I would encourage you, and this is not meant to be, uh, you know, like a chastisement of, of our friends at the surgery center out there.

Erik Sunset: But take a look around. Um, there are so many great technologies, [00:12:00] you know, not least of all DocBuddy op note, and you’ve got great flexibility with us to either start with your entire panel of surgeons, your whole roster, or some subset of them. You know, once you get op note into the facility, everybody else is gonna want to use it too.

Erik Sunset: So surgeons included as well as staff. So your business office staff that aren’t gonna have to chase signatures. They’re not gonna have to move data manually all around town. You know, back to the surgeon’s clinics, secure emails. Hey, can you fax that to us? Like, this stuff is so, it’s so passe. And when you’re, when you’re one of two like major industries, still using fax.

Erik Sunset: So healthcare is one, and, uh, the federal government is the other, like the IRS comes to mind. You’re not really in great company technologically speaking. No issue with the people, obviously we’re just, we’re just speaking generally here about the industry. Fax. Yeah. EFAs, it’s still fax people, like that’s still a ma.

Erik Sunset: [00:13:00] There’s still some amount of manual process there, whereas with doc equity op note and with today’s tech, um, and the integrations possible. There shouldn’t be any extra steps. You shouldn’t have any wait time, you shouldn’t have any manual processes. I mean, heck, what, what’s gonna happen with, um, with something like Claude Cowork, what’s gonna happen with legitimate, you know, enterprise weapons, grade ai, there’s not gonna be any more sort of manual processes or manual handovers of information for anybody ever again.

Erik Sunset: You can already do that by the way, with DocBuddy op note, this is gonna sound a little bit like an ad read, so just bear with me. But it’s instant op reports. It’s revenue cycle uplift, so your days to bill is gonna come down. Gold standards, three days to bill. We have facilities sending out, uh, claims for procedures performed the same day.

Erik Sunset: Can’t do that with transcription usually. There’s a labor aspect to this as well, and when I talk about the labor cost reduction for your op report supply chain, this is what I [00:14:00] mean. This is that manual process that I’m speaking about. Old way OP report goes out to transcription, transcribe report comes back, surgeon needs to sign it.

Erik Sunset: After reviewing it, be sure that it’s complete, that there’s no blanks. Does that happen automatically or does somebody have to remind the surgeon? You know, think about what happens at your facility. You probably have some surgeons that don’t take a whole lot of reminding, but I bet you got a majority that at least occasionally need to be reminded to review and finalize their OP reports.

Erik Sunset: Uh, that’s a piece of the labor cost reduction, but then just simply moving that data around. So we’re integrated with your core ASC, PMs and EHRs, so all the ones you know by name. Um, as well as a number of clinic EHR so that when that OP report with op node is completed, it’s getting piped straight back into the facilities EHR.

Erik Sunset: And it’s okay if you don’t have an EHR, by the way, PM and, or EHR, we’re sending OP [00:15:00] reports right back to your core system, so any of the assists products, HST. So if you have an EHR, not great. Doesn’t matter. It’s also with op note going immediately back to the surgeon’s clinic as well. Um, we have integration options as well as, uh, notification options to make that happen, to make that seamless for everybody involved.

Erik Sunset: Okay, so we’re at 15 minutes here. I think that’s more than enough. Uh, really got on my soapbox there. So if you made it this far into the episode. Thank you. And you know what? Maybe it’s something fun. If you made it this far into the episode, send me a note, eric@docbuddy.com. ERI k@docbuddy.com. Maybe I’ll send you a couple of Slim can coozies, uh, for your favorite Slim Can drinks.

Erik Sunset: Maybe it’s a Celsius Energy drink. Maybe it’s something like a White Claw or a high noon, uh, lake season. Boating season’s coming back up. It’s already March. It’s already hot here in Miami. Uh, but send me a note if you made it this far in. Thanks for listening. As always, be sure you’re subscribed on Apple Podcasts, [00:16:00] Spotify, subscribe on YouTube too.

Erik Sunset: We think the video version of the show is the best version of the show, not because you get to see me, but because when we have guests, you get to see them. You can also get the episodes of the DocBuddy journal on our website, DocBuddy.com/podcast. You can get ’em all right there. And with that, on behalf of the entire DocBuddy team, I want to thank you for listening.

Erik Sunset: And be sure, uh, to catch us on the next episode. Until next time, I’m your host, Erik. We’ll talk to you soon. Bye.