If your surgery center is still relying on transcription services, freehand dictation, or rigid EHR templates for operative reports, this episode of the DocBuddy Journal is worth your time. Host Erik Sunset makes the case that what many ASCs treat as standard practice is actually just the old way and there’s a measurable cost to staying there.
Drawing from Doc Buddy’s own onboarding process, Erik explains how Op Note transforms surgeon dictation into standardized, EHR-integrated operative reports in real time, without changing how surgeons work or burdening the business office with setup. The result is documentation that’s cleaner, faster, and more revenue cycle friendly — with less rework, fewer denied claims, and a direct impact on days to bill and days AR.
Plus, Erik shares highlights from the Surgery Partners Leadership Conference and what to expect from DocBuddy at ASCA 2026 in Washington, DC.
Links from the show:
Click to expand and read this episode's transcript.
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Erik Sunset: All right, we’re back. Hello. Welcome. This is the DocBuddy journal. I’m your host, Erik Sunset. Whether this is your first time listening to the show or whether you are a long time DocBuddy journal head, either welcome, uh, we’re glad to have you or welcome back. Uh, we’re glad you’re back. This episode’s getting recorded on Wednesday, April 29th.
It’s about one 30 Eastern time. And wow, we are very much underway for the year. I wanna give a big thank you, uh, a very sincere special thank you to the Surgery Partners Team DocBuddy was lucky enough, uh, privileged enough to support Surgery Partners, uh, annual leadership meeting, or annual leadership conference, as it were, which was in a gorgeous setting.
The Omni LaCosta in Carlsbad, [00:01:00] California, and o obviously for, for somebody like me coming such a long way across the country in Miami, you know, you kinda wonder what, what kind, what kind of resort are we gonna be at? Is it gonna be nice? Is the food gonna be good? Um. You know, kind of silly questions to ask, but they do matter.
They do matter. They, they lend themselves to either a great experience or, uh, an experience that maybe doesn’t meet the mark, but between the surgery partners team and their event, uh, agency, shout out. Angie. Thank you for all your help out there. Uh, it was a fantastic event. Uh, so everything ran on Rails.
Uh, the speakers were fantastic. Big shout out. Eric Evans, surgery partner, CEO, gave a great, uh, keynote, I guess you’d say. Surgery partners says new COO as well, Justin. Very interesting. Uh. Second half of the keynote, I guess you’d say. Um, and as you are, are all well aware surgery partners near and dear to our hearts, as well as the rest of our friends and family, [00:02:00] um, out there in ASC land.
But just fantastic week in Carlsbad. A lot of fun, new connections. Uh, great to see existing customers and then great to see friends of DocBuddy, like all of our, uh, like all of our vendors, uh, that were part of the exhibit hall. All right. So that’s that. Thank you once again. The surgery partners and, uh, EES agency, ESS agency.
Sorry, I’m not gonna look it up. We’re, we’re recording here. Need a producer to, to pick me up. But Surgery Partners and your event team. Fantastic. Absolutely loved it. And you know what, we’re a couple weeks away from asca, uh, ASCA conference 2026. This time it’s with Samba too, and that’s kind of fun for me.
Um, I, um. We’ve got fond memories of ASCA and Samba from years gone by. You guys will remember that I’ve got some revenue cycle background where, um, you know, samba would’ve been important to us, uh, back in the revenue cycle days. I would support to us a dock buddy as well, uh, to a degree. But ASCA and samba all in one, all [00:03:00] under one roof in Washington, DC That’s May 13th through the 16th, 2026.
That’s about two weeks away, guys. But I’m gonna go out on a limb here on behalf of asca. And say it is not too late to get your tickets. You can get those, uh, get those tickets on asc association.org/annual conference. We’ll put a link to that in the show notes. You guys know, uh, it’s not just lip service.
We are flying the flag. Hi and proud for our friends at asca. Uh, we might as well do a few shout outs here too. Shout out Chris Shriver. Shout out Alex Ell. Shout out. Bill Prentice. Uh, former guest of the, of the pod and we’re hoping to get him back on this summer. We’re, uh, we’re in the planning stages of that, so always a treat to have the, uh, the head of the Ambulatory Surgery Center Association on our humble little podcast.
So, again, ask as is gonna be the next place you can see the DocBuddy team and see our [00:04:00] entire suite of solutions, but primarily opt out. You also get a good look at, uh, surgery workflow too, if you ask nicely. Um, we will be there and um, more info to come on where exactly our booth is. Um, but we’ve got a really great centrally located spot.
Alright, so that’s that. Um, I wanted to share, um, one of the things that’s been going through my mind recently, um, and that’s how Atory Surgery Centers without DocBuddy are managing their documentation. So I wanna give you, uh, some insight into how we view this, like our perspectives. We gotta zoom out just a little bit, not too far, but buckle up as part of our go live process for a newly signed op note facility.
So if you don’t, if you’re not aware, maybe it’s the first time you’re hearing the show. Op note is our EHR integrated solution for the instant [00:05:00] generation and approval of operative reports. And it eliminates all of the administrative tasks that, uh, surgery centers regard as the status quo, not as the old way.
Op note, relatively new to the market right now. It’s the only thing that is doing what we’re doing. Um, so when somebody, uh, purchases, when a facility, uh, decides to acquire op notes as part of the activation process, our fabulous account management team will ask the business office, they’ll ask the administrator wherever it needs to come from.
Uh, for a copy of each of the surgeon’s templates so that we can transform those templates into our voice commands. And then once we have them in voice command format, we load them on behalf of our new users. So whether you’re a brand new facility, um, just getting started with us, or whether you’re adding a new surgeon to an existing facility, we take care of all that.
Uh, just this isn’t the point of invoking all of this part of the conversation, but we handle that. Nobody at your facility has to set up voice [00:06:00] commands. Now you can, but as part of activation, we do that for you. Um, and when a facility is coming off of a transcription service and at least some of the surgeons are using templates, um, this is pretty easy to manage because there’s like existing documentation, right?
And to be clear, it doesn’t really matter to us if it’s easy for us to manage or not. Uh, we’re gonna do it with a smile on our face because that’s part of our service and solution that we handle Your voice command setup. Um, but on the other, on the other end of this, if, uh, if your surgeons are using a transcription service and they’re doing the full read, like the full dictation, no templates, so taking it from the top, uh, data service, uh, patient name, patient demographics, and then into the procedure details.
Uh, that’s what we call like the full read or the full treatment. There’s probably not a template for that type of workflow, right? Like the surgeon calls a one 800 number or they open [00:07:00] up some other app on their phone that records their voice. Um, there’s just not gonna be a template there. And again, that’s okay.
Um, we’re able to just get previously completed operative reports that the surgeon and the business office, uh, both agree are pretty good. Then we transform those into our voice commands, which is not exactly the same as a template, but think of it as a template. And the point here of all this isn’t really, uh, about our process or where the source material comes from for what will become a new user’s voice commands.
The point is around standardization of clinical documentation and guys and gals, you know, ladies and gentlemen. There are so many really terrible workflows out there that we, that we see and that we fix. Obviously the terrible workflows aren’t a part of, uh, of DocBuddy op note, but we have seen stuff that would just make your skin crawl.[00:08:00]
Um, and we can get into detail on that. Uh, if you at ASCA, we’ll be happy to share some sort of war stories about the ugliest type of documentation, libraries that we’ve seen. But the important thing here is for my surgery center administrators, for my business office managers, for anybody who is a stakeholder to this op report, uh, supply chain and this op report process, I need you to know there’s a better way.
There’s a better way than whatever’s front of mind for the surgeon to throw up into the phone. Um, and then, you know, odds are pretty good or the, the odds aren’t great. Maybe that there’s gonna be a coding query coming back, that there is going to be a lack of specificity in that documentation, um, that there’s gonna be an addendum needed if it’s just freewheeling off the cuff.
And certainly it’s not every time, like this is the way, uh. Surgeries have been documented for years and years and years and years and [00:09:00] years. And if you’re a long time listener of the show for years and years and years and years, you’ll have heard me say that a lot of the, uh, a lot of the fun part of being at Doc Buddies is that we’re bringing something totally new.
So again, a lot of folks out there in ASC land regard a process as the status quo, when really it’s the old way. And to come back to the point here. Our voice commands give the facility and cer and the care teams that you tell us, uh, to, to segment out, to standardize documentation, but still allowing your surgeon to provide all of the color that they need and that they want to in an operative report without boxing them into some super restrictive template.
That’s one of the things we hear about some of the, um. The more screen-based documentation, so your EHRs, your blends of dictation and clicking, they can be pretty structured. They can be [00:10:00] pretty rigid with the templating. So you’re either having to, to drop secondary templates in, or you’re having to have sort of like a mega template that you’re sticking into, um, into your software and then having to trim back.
You know, surgeons don’t like that. It needs to be really easy, really frictionless. Um, so that’s, that’s a, one of the prongs of this, uh, statement is around surgeon satisfaction. Uh, but being able to standardize documentation that’s gonna give you a positive revenue cycle impact with DocBuddy, you’re gonna see less coding queries, less addendums, and you’re gonna spend less of your precious time on admin tasks because as the surgeon is generating their documentation in real time, and look at this, I’ve even got my phone right here.
They’re talking to their phone in real time. They’re using our voice commands right here, right now. It’s not going anywhere else. It doesn’t have to come back from anybody. It’s all happening right in front of their eyes on their phone. When they’re happy with it, they click sign off, and then it’s going back to [00:11:00] your, uh, practice management software.
It’s going back to your EHR software. If you got an e hr, great. If you don’t, that’s not a problem. So we see a lot of HST pathways, we see a lot of the cis family of. Of, uh, pm products out there, we’re integrated with all of them, which is fantastic. Um, but you’re not only getting an efficiency gain in terms of speed, but if, if you’re thoughtful about how your voice commands are set up, and if you’ve got a thoughtful coding teamwork, a thoughtful revenue cycle vendor, they’re gonna be able to say, Hey, when you’re doing a left total hip, or when you’re doing a rotator cuff repair, or when you’re doing pick your procedure.
Anything, it doesn’t matter what. It’s really great when we see all of these points in the documentation, and that doesn’t mean that the documentation is gonna be same across every single patient that ever has that procedure done there. Like we said already, there is plenty of latitude for the surgeon to provide as much, uh, case specific detail and color [00:12:00] as they would like to.
Because this isn’t a copy and paste, you know, documentation solution. We we’re not in the business of. Copy and paste documentation. We’re in the business of streamlining the process for the surgeon and giving them the ability to yap, which we all like to, and you know, if you’ve listened to the show, you know, I sit here and talk to the screen for quite some time.
Maybe you should get help for that. Um, but if you’re able to standardize the core of your documentation, of your operative reports. That’s less coding queries, that’s less addendums. That means you’re getting paid sooner. Um, and this is all just by virtue of how the software works. You don’t really have to change all that much, and you certainly don’t have to spend a whole lot of time setting it up like we’ve already said.
We do the setup for you and the bottom line. When you’re talking to your surgeons about this thing you heard about on the podcast or this thing that you saw at ASCA or at Surgery Partners, uh, leadership Conference, or heck at s CA’s annual leadership meeting, or at any of the other events that you’ve seen us at, when you’re talking [00:13:00] to the surgeon about how great op node ads, you need to remind them, look, we’re not really changing what you’re doing, doc.
You’re gonna have a different app. It’s gonna be the DocBuddy app. You’re welcome, uh, but you still talk. And at the other end of this process comes an operative report, but it’s digital. It’s coming back to the facility software instantly. It’s going back to the surgeon’s clinic instantly. Nobody has to touch anything.
Nobody has to really do anything. And what we see is, uh, not only is this increasing surgeon satisfaction, but the revenue cycle impact is, uh, not to be understated or underestimated. Op note DocBuddy. Op note is the only way to reduce your days to bill. So the amount of time it takes for a procedure to end and for that claim to actually hit the revenue cycle, like be submitted to the payer outta your pm.
So that’s huge by extension. This reduces your day’s, AR [00:14:00] now. Uh, let’s be real folks. You know, anybody in a medical practice, anybody in a surgery center, anybody in a hospital billing department knows that just getting the claim into the revenue cycle is only part of it. Um, we’re not in control of your appeals process.
We’re not in charge of managing denials. We’re not Doc, this is DocBuddy. Obviously, your revenue cycle vendor will be, or your central billing office will be, or your billing team will be. We can’t take a ton of credit on, uh, on what happens after that claim hits the revenue cycle. But days AR comes down.
We’ve got aggregated data across our entire client base. So not only is days to bill going down, days ar is going down and you’re seeing, you’re gonna see less coding queries and less addendums. And just simply more, uh, first time, uh, first pass payments, uh, with your documentation, uh, coming out of DocBuddy op note.
Okay. That’s a lot longer than I thought we were gonna go here. Thank you so much. If you [00:15:00] made it to the end of this episode, to hear the ramblings of an op note, crazed Chief Revenue Officer such as myself, to learn more either, be sure we’re on your dance card at ASCA again two weeks away. A c association.org.
Get there, get your tickets. Come to dc we will be there. You can also visit DocBuddy.com. If you’re not making the trip to ASCA or if we’re not gonna see you across the variety of road shows, uh, that will be on through the summer and into the fall. DocBuddy.com/solutions/op note, we get a link to that into the show notes to get yourself a demo.
One of the things we hear all the time is this is something you have to see to believe because it sounds almost too good to be true. I assure you it’s not. And on behalf of the entire doc WI team, I wanna thank you for listening. Get yourself subscribed on Apple Pods, on Spotify, and on YouTube. You can also get the newest episodes of the show on docbuddy.com/podcast.
And until next time, I’m your host, Erik. Have a great day. We’ll talk soon.