Key Insights from HealthEx 2025

Erik Sunset: [00:00:00] All right. 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 cost outta broken workflows like with our op note app, which gives ASEs and their affiliated clinics the power of instantly generated operative reports that are approved from the point of care.

You can learn more about op Note and all of our solutions at docbuddy.com. And we’re back. Uh, as I said, we’re back after a short layoff. I’ve missed you all so much. After episode 100 with the credentialing Chronicles crew, they were a riot. Highly recommend checking out our episode with Nylene and with Shannon.

And giving Credentialing Chronicles a subscription of its own on Apple Pods and Spotify and wherever else you get your podcasts. Uh, but we’ve been busy, uh, the DocBuddy roadshow through the end of March and April and then into May has been hot and heavy. This [00:01:00] last week we were at McDermott Will and Emory’s Healthx event in Nashville.

Prior to that, we were at ASCA 2025 in Denver. Before that, we were at the SCA Annual Leadership meeting where we got to see our, our good friends and guests of the podcast. Uh, Dr. Peter Daley and Lulu daily founders of one world surgery. And wow. Uh, we’re really just getting started, uh, with all of the events and in the event season here.

And while we’re, we’re talking about where we’ve been, let’s take a moment to talk about where we’ll be next. The very next place you can see DocBuddy on the road is at Gulf State’s Excellence in New Orleans. That’s June 11th. After that, we’ll be at Becker Spine and Payne in Chicago. That’s June 18th.

Parallel to Becker’s Spine and Pain Conference in Chicago will be at the Arizona ASCA Annual Conference, which is also on June 18th in Scottsdale. [00:02:00] From there, we’re packing it up for the Lone Star states. We will be at Tasks, which is the Texas Ambulatory Surgery Center Society Annual Conference, which is just outside of Dallas and Irving.

And then the last stop, uh, that we know of for the summer. Is in Orlando for F-S-A-S-C on July 23rd. That is the Florida Society of Ambulatory Surgical Centers. Um, and as usual will be in Orlando. Ought be nice and hot. July and Orlando. And one of the things that, uh, that always sticks out to me at these in-person events, obviously you can get to us online just about any way that you’d like.

DocBuddy.com is a great place to start. We’re really active on LinkedIn. You can find our Twitter accounts or X accounts, the artist formally known as Twitter, um, as well, not so much on Facebook, but we’re very easy to find. Um, on our website and LinkedIn and to a certain degree, [00:03:00] Twitter. Uh, but one of the things that always stands out to me about being in front of all of our friends and colleagues in the ambulatory surgery center space is that when you look at our value prop for op notes, which is instant operative reports and an accelerated revenue cycle.

It can almost seem too good to be true and you’re seeing it in letters, you know, that are this high on our, uh, on our booth backer. If you’ve ever bumped into DocBuddy on the road, you know you can come to us and get a Celsius Energy drink, but we’re also really happy to talk to you about instant operative reports.

And even after all these years of helping surgery centers with their operative report process and supply chain, it’s still really gratifying to me to actually show the value of OP Note to someone. Um, and maybe they’ve seen our marketing online or maybe they’ve walked by our booth, but never stop by to, to say hi or get their get their energy drink.

If all you are familiar with about [00:04:00] DocBuddy is the marketing, you can kinda look at it and go in operative reports really. Yeah. Right. But it’s very real. Um, and our clients will attest to that, whether you’re at a management company or a management company owned facility, or you’re, you’re an independent facility or anybody in between.

Um, it’s very real, and that’s why I think it’s all the more important for those of you at a surgery center to actually see it. So you can believe it. And one of the things that is really interesting to me is that obviously as a surgeon you get to use the workflow that you like, which is dictation. And we all know, you’ve heard me talk about this before, that op note replaces this 100-year-old modality.

Which is transcription. Uh, for the generation of operative reports, they love it ’cause they don’t really have to change anything that they’re doing. We give ’em a different piece of tech. It’s integrated into their EHR, whatever you’ve got at the surgery center. We’ve got great relationships with all of the, the big [00:05:00] players in the space and even the not so big players in the space in terms of integration.

Uh, so there’s not a whole lot that changes on the surgeon end of things, but when you’re the administrator or you’re a member of the business office staff. And ultimately you are tasked with getting completed and finalized. And by that of course, I mean signed operative reports when we talk to you about a reduction in days on build for your revenue cycle, and that of course is talking about how long after the procedure did it take you to get a finalized operative report, have that claim coded, have that claim generated, and then finally submitted to the payer.

You know, that’s your days unbuild. And when we’re talking to surgery center administrators, CEOs, anybody who’s a stakeholder in this operative report, supply chain, and we’re talking about instant and we’re gonna help you get paid faster. It really is kind of incredulous at times. Like, oh yeah, I’ve heard that before.

[00:06:00] Every revenue cycle company on the market is talking about get paid more, get paid faster. And to be clear, we’re not a revenue cycle company. We’re the very front end of a tech enabled revenue cycle, though, talking about provider and surgeon documentation rather. But when they see it, when you flip the phone out and give the the 92nd demo to somebody at a surgery center, it clicks.

And the reason it clicks is that nobody’s ever had access to tech like this before. It just hasn’t existed. There’s really been two main ways, maybe two and a half main ways that surgeons have generated operative reports until op note came along. Number one is that transcription workflow that we’ve already talked about, ad nauseum at length.

The other is gonna be documentation in the surgery center’s, EHR, and we all know how tough that can be, that you’ve got a very busy surgeon any minute wasted on administrative tasks by a surgeon at a surgery center. Is [00:07:00] magnified even to a greater degree than at their practice. So getting a surgeon to use their their EHR can be tough.

I’m not saying it can’t be done, I’m not advocating against it, um, in any sense, but it’s tough. The the half reasons, we talked about two and a half modalities for generating operative reports. The one we still hear from time to time is, uh, we’ve got a surgeon that has a Word doc template. That they use their dragon with crazy, right?

But we still see it. We still replace it. We’re still delighting surgeons. By replacing this sort of Frankenstein workflow where you’ve got a Dragon Power mic plugged into a computer, plugged into a workstation or a laptop, you open up a Word document and hopefully that Word document is being shared securely.

To wherever it needs to go, uh, to the, to the billing office and then signing off on that chart in their EHR or whatever mechanism that they’re [00:08:00] using. But I digress, uh, and I digress quite a bit there, that it is still a delight to show op note to folks that haven’t yet seen it. Just because there is nothing like it, there is only one way to get anything like op note and that’s to talk to DocBuddy.

And this has become a little bit of a protracted ad read here, and I don’t, I don’t mean for it to be, uh, but just want to reiterate that if you are in the Southeast, or if you’re going to Becker’s Spine and Pain in Chicago, or if you’re in Arizona, if you’re a member of any of these societies. So just one more time, Gulf State’s Excellence, Arizona ASCA tasks, F-S-A-S-C, or if we’re gonna see you at Becker’s Spine and Pain in Chicago.

Come by the booth, check it out. The demo is not long. It’s very intuitive and everything that powers it behind the scenes in terms of integrations, it’s really easy to understand. It’s really easy to talk to and it will [00:09:00] revolutionize not only your operative report process, but by extension your revenue cycle and that you are no longer waiting on a signature for anything because the surgeon is generating and signing their operative reports using their phone.

Which is integrated with your surgery center’s, EHR, and in a lot of cases the surgeon’s clinic, EHR as well. Don’t forget that operative reports have to go back to the clinic somehow, some way as well, right? And then that will allow you to see and believe that not only is it real, but it’s very simple and it’s very lightweight to get up and running.

Alright, so I’m gonna take a quick breath there. Excuse me. I wanna talk a little bit about McDermott Will and Emory’s Health Ex, and more specifically the Physician Practice Management and ASC symposium, which is presented by our good friends at Surgery Partners. What a great week. We kicked it off with a networking event on Tuesday nights at the One Hotel.

A lot of [00:10:00] friends of DocBuddy were there. I wanna shout out our buds at, at AI Health, at Ziglar, at Ancor and everybody else that was there. What a great event. Thank you for coming. Uh, you certainly know how to reach me if you were there. Uh, look forward already. Looking forward to the next one. And that really kicked off our Health X Week.

Uh, a lot of great connections. Obviously seeing. Friends of DocBuddy, colleagues, clients, uh, partners, all the way through the whole spectrum of folks that you know and see. Great to see you out there. But I really want to hone in on a session that stood out to me, which was on Thursday morning at the PPM and ASC symposium there in Nashville.

It was titled Leading the Future of Healthcare Insights from the C-Suites of ASC Management Companies. And it was a panel with Erik Evans, who’s the CEO of surgery partners, Windborn McPhail, president of SCA, Travis Messina, CEO of [00:11:00] Regent Surgical, and Jeff Snodgrass, who leads AmSurg. Uh, it was a, a very interesting panel.

We went around the horn a couple of times. You know, what are you seeing acquisition wise? Uh, how are you partnering with health systems? But I think the most important question was the one that came towards the end, which was, what are you doing to elevate your level of care, elevate your business, you know, as the surgery center management company, and what are some of the things that are most important to you to do so?

And the an, the answers sound like consensus, but each group was tackling it slightly differently. Um, the recurring theme though was around operational basics. What are we doing to block and tackle really well? So obviously physician engagement and being able to recruit new physicians to your cause, to your respective cause was really big.

And then tech technology was [00:12:00] also a recurring theme, and that meant something different to everybody, um, on the stage, whether it was Erik Evans or Windborn Fail, Travis Messina or, or Jeff Snodgrass, everybody’s approaching tech a little bit differently, but their recurring theme was that their just hasn’t been the adoption in ASCs, uh, that the rest of healthcare has gotten.

And of course, the rest of healthcare. Still really lags behind the rest of industry at large. And again, you kind of see where I’m going with this, but if insurance claims are your revenue source and we don’t wanna lose track of the patient and all the great work that all of the surgeons and staff provide and all the outcomes that they deliver at the surgery center, which by the way is more cost effective, it’s more accessible, it’s really, uh, just, uh.

Uh, unbelievable venue of care as opposed to a hospital outpatient department, uh, or even inpatient care at the hospital. We all know how highly [00:13:00] we think of ASC and all the great work that ASCA does to advocate for that, but it was around tech. And again, that was another digression. We don’t wanna lose track that we’re caring for patients and improving, uh, folks’ lives with surgery at the ASC.

But if revenue cycle and, and insurance reimbursement is the lifeblood of these organizations, they are crying out for help with technology, meaningful technology. Obviously, each of these management companies has approached their core EHR decision, uh, essentially one way or the other. And just to spell it out, by either selecting HST Pathways or they’re using a SIS product, uh, surgical Information Systems, SISI call it sis.

You can call it whatever you like. Everybody’s approached their core software needs, uh, sort of in one direction or the other. And we’ve got a lot of great friends at HST and it’s sis. So this is not to detract from any of the work that their teams [00:14:00] do. Um, however. When you look at the adoption of solutions that deliver a tech enabled revenue cycle experience, which you know both of these products do, but you need to have the surgeon in the computer, you know, kind of like Zoolander, right?

The files are in the computer. You have to have surgeons generating their documentation in that core EHR product when the adoption there has lagged as compared to the ambulatory. Market, not ambulatory surgery market, but the practice based market where virtually everybody’s documenting in an EHR. And that’s just kind of the way things are on the surgery center side of things.

That legacy transcription workflow is still hugely prevalent and make no mistake, doc buddies out changing that every day. We’re we’re moving folks from legacy transcription with this inherent weights over to op note, which removes all of the lag inherent to these legacy processes. [00:15:00] Um, when they use our app, uh, EHR integrated app, that is, but when you combine all of the physician engagement and physician recruitment that these groups do to continue evangelizing in a way, the surgery center, you know, more is more.

But different is in fact different when it comes to technology. Um, I’m really excited about the road ahead for Dock Buddy, just because we’re not only delighting surgeons, but we’re also given the revenue cycle teams at these management companies, or even the business office at an independent practice or independent facility.

Excuse me, it’s a callback to my practice based EHR days referring to the surgery center as a practice.

But if you’re able to remove some of these, uh, some of these obstacles to a tech enabled revenue cycle with a really lightweight piece of tech like DocBuddy, it is just, it’s absolutely transformational. You know, without opening up the kimono all the way, you know, facilities [00:16:00] at these management companies, they’re already seeing the difference.

They’re seeing a huge difference in terms of days on build, in terms of the amount of hours, and yes, I’m talking about hours, not days. From the end of the procedure to having a finalized and signed operative report with DocBuddy. This really just speaks to the fact that you need the right tech and able to block and tackle really well.

Now there’s some parts of that the DocBuddy doesn’t address, right? Like you need to have an outstanding patient experience. Uh, you need to be ready for those, uh, accreditation bodies to drop in and run your audits and be doing all the right things, you know, separate from the operative report generation and the OP report supply chain.

So that’s very much a part of blocking and tackling really well, which Erik Windborn, Travis, Jeff, and the moderator for the session, all rightfully pointed out. I view that as the hard work though. The patient experience, the, the surgeons at these management companies are top notch. [00:17:00] They’re doing the right thing for their patients.

So if you’re doing the hard parts really well, why would you not make an easy change from legacy workflow to. Next generation tech to continue blocking and tackling really well. I mean, generating code, coding an encounter, generat a claim and submitting it. I mean, that is sort of like the basis, right?

Like that’s, that’s table stakes for for groups of this size. And when they get ahold of DocBuddy and see that that revenue cycle speeds up by, what is it, 7200% I think if you go from 15 days down to a matter of hours. It’s pretty compelling. So in closing, uh, thank you for listening to the DocBuddy journal.

Thanks for if you made it this far. Thanks for standing by through our, through my stream of consciousness here. We want to be sure you’re subscribed on Apple Pods, on Spotify and on YouTube, so you can always get the newest episodes of the [00:18:00] show. And until next time, I’m your host Erik, and if you have any questions about where you can see DocBuddy next, you’re welcome to email sales@docbuddy.com.

We’ll be happy to set up an appointment for you at Gulf States Becker Spine and Pain, Arizona ASCA tasks F-S-A-S-C, and that’s just the list that gets us the rest of the way through the summer proper, as it were, all the way through July. We will certainly be around through Q3 and into Q4 right up until sort of trade show season ends and Thanksgiving.

Appreciate you listening. If I can do anything to help, uh, please reach out. If you’d like to be a guest on the show, you’re welcome to reach out as well. We’ll talk to you soon. Bye.