Welcome to Surgisnacks, a podcast that serves

up tasty insights for your surgical practice.

Join Al Norweb and Justin Rockman of Surgimate

as they deliver bite-sized episodes that feature

actionable insights and real-world examples to help

you conquer the challenges of surgical scheduling and

unlock your practice’s full potential.

Let’s dig in.

Welcome back to another episode of SurgiSnacks.

My name is Justin Rockman, and I’m

the VP of Business Development at Surgimate.

If you like to geek out about the business of

surgical practices, then you’ve come to the right place.

Here on SurgiSnacks, our goal is to provide you

with bite-sized sessions about ten to twelve minutes each that

you can listen to during your coffee break or in

the car and give you some fresh new ideas when

it comes to running your surgical practice.

My fearless co-host, Al Norweb, won’t be with

me today, but I’m very excited to have Andrew

Wade, CEO of OrthoSC in Myrtle Beach, join me

on our Labor Day special episode.

Welcome, Andrew.

Hey, Justin.

Thanks so much for letting me be here today.

I’m excited to connect with you guys and

share a little bit of our story.

Fantastic. Thank you, Andrew.

So our audience who might not have had

the pleasure of your acquaintance, could you please

share a little brief introduction about yourself?

Yes.

So I’m a South Carolina native, been in

healthcare for almost 15 years at this point,

almost entirely in the realm of Orthopedics.

So I’ve seen a lot of transition, a lot

of change happen over the last couple of years.

It’s been really fascinating to watch, and it’s going to

be a really exciting next 15 years as well.

So excited to talk with you guys today about

some of the technology and the tools and some

of the stuff that makes our world run.

We’re very excited to hear as well.

So the topic for our special Labor Day

episode is centered around people, the hardworking staff

of the surgical practice, who really keep the

business running the business of surgical practices.

They really are the beating heart of

any organization, and they fuel everything.

Now, we have a little tradition here on SurgiSnacks, which

is to link a snack to the theme of the episode.

So today’s is my favorite energy drink, which is

Gatorade, because it’s our team that fuels our performance.

Okay.

I’m sure if you like Gatorade, but I love it.

Andrew, your practice is hugely, hugely successful.

I’ve met with your team numerous times over

the year, and they all seem to be

extremely positive and very highly motivated.

Can you share some of the creative ways that

OrthoSC has fostered really such a positive work environment?

Sure.

I think I would share that some of

the most important things that we’ve done are

really making the ultimate end and the ultimate

goal of everything that we do, our patients.

And in doing that, we have really been

super fortunate to build a team that is

here for the right reasons, right.

They align with that goal of serving our patients well.

And they are people who really, they just

find joy in doing the work that they’re

doing, serving the patients in our community well.

And they recognize the really incredible gift that it is

to be a part of our community in that way.

So on the technical side of that, we know

that our people are what make the place run.

We are so fortunate to have a really great group of

physicians, but there is a massive team of people working around

in front of, behind and off to the sides of each

one of them who really are the right, the left hand

of everything that happens in the practice.

And so from day one with OrthoSC, we’ve really tried

to focus on how do we create an environment that’s

going to give our team the ability to thrive not

just professionally, but as people and as individuals who all

show up to work with different talents and different skills

and different gifts and different passions.

And so we’ve just been really fortunate getting to have

a chance to build OrthoSC from the ground up with

that in mind and being able to leverage tools and

resources to help our people succeed and win.

So people and also the community, you

also mentioned the tools, what’s the interaction between

the people and the tools themselves?

Meaning is it the people that are driving the tools or

is it the tools that help the people along the way?

Yeah, we definitely see the tools being a tool, right.

You can’t buy a piece of equipment or software that can

replace the value that a really sharp, really capable team can

bring and what they can do in an organization.

One of the neat things that is just kind of

a buzzword in the universe today is what AI is

going to look like and how that’s going to run.

I think that artificial intelligence versus augmented

intelligence is a really neat argument, right?

I think we tend to look at

it as the augmented intelligence pathway.

We don’t see AI really replacing the truly unique gift that

our teams bring, but we really do expect that in time,

augmented intelligence is really going to enable them to do more

with their time, with their energy, with their focus, by taking

some of the menial stuff and just kind of shoving it

off to the side and automating.

Those workflows so that they can

really focus on truly driving value.

And truly, when we say driving value, we

mean first and foremost for our patients, right.

The people who are showing up through our door, who

are entrusting their care to us and then obviously behind

delivering well for our patients, giving them more time to

connect and work on not just in our business, but

working on our business so that we can be better

at what we do every day.

We’ve been super impressed thus far.

That our bet that if we take care of our people

and if we try to do the right thing in our

community, it’s going to work out well for us.

And that’s been a good bet so far.

Yeah.

And you really want your people to do the best work that

they can and the way in which you can enable them do

that best work is to provide them with the right tools.

And often those tools do appear only in the

background and it’s the people who are in the

front and the tools are supporting and enabling them.

But really, if it’s too focused on the technology and

too focused on the tools, then the people disappear and

that creates a lower level of patient experience.

Yes.

So one of those key tools that I’ve seen that you’ve

used very strongly happens to be on LinkedIn right now.

We’re connected there.

And I see you do fantastic praise that you give

and dole out to your team, to your staff, in

terms of recognition and different programs and celebrations.

Do you have a structured program in place?

Is this intentional or what have you done

to implement such a successful strategy at OrthoSC?

That’s a lot to unpack there.

I would say with what I do on LinkedIn,

I see myself as a student of leadership. Right.

So I’m nowhere near having anything

figured out in my life.

And so I use LinkedIn as a tool to learn.

I’m always looking for what are other

people out in the industry doing?

How are they engaging with their teams?

What are they doing to solve the problems?

I see my role as not as the company’s boss,

not as just the CEO who’s in his office, right,

but as somebody who’s supposed to be out there helping

figure out how are we going to pull this off.

And then working with our team to figure out how

do we structure and organize those people, how do we

bring in the newest tool that’s become available out there,

how do we help our business and our team thrive?

One of the neat things that we have

seen from that perspective is that it is

just super personally focused for us.

We do some of the more traditional stuff.

We’ve got some of the we call it props.

So it’s an opportunity.

Anytime one of our team members recognizes another fellow

team member doing some incredible work, we’ve got a

system set up where they can send a quick

note in and recognize that team member and we

recognize those folks in our newsletter.

We do a shout-out channel in our

version of Slack Microsoft Teams that we use.

And that’s been really cool.

But we really find that the reward

systems work best when they’re personalized. Right?

And so one of the things that we do is

we drive our leaders to not just work with their

team, but to know their, you know, to know when

their team is celebrating a marriage or a kid’s first.

Day of school or a new team that’s been joined

to walk with the team through hard moments when they

have a loss in their family or when they’re going

through a really tough time at work or at school

or outside or whatever that is.

And our reward systems work the same way. Right.

So it’s tough to explain because it’s

really kind of all over the place.

And that’s because we’ve designed the system as such

that we want each of our leaders to figure

out what works for their team and leverage that

instead of just a cookie-cutter approach that does

something across the entire company at one time.

My business office revenue cycle director

is really fantastic at it.

She works with almost an entirely remote team,

which has its own set of challenges, right?

When you can’t see people face to face every day.

But she’s created some really neat stuff where

she’s doing stuff with them asynchronously and also

scheduling events where they can all come together

and hang out together outside of work and

do things together in that sense.

So it’s been really neat to see how

that super personalized approach really connects with folks

and can recognize them the way that they

need to be recognized to see that.

So both external recognition programs, front-facing programs

like LinkedIn, but also you’ve instituted a lot

of internal recognition programs, and it’s also not

just about celebrating the big things.

It’s also the personal milestones and recognizing

team for exceptional work, large and small.

Yes.

I think I would say there’s real

power in just saying thank you. Right.

It’s such a small thing.

Absolutely.

But the ratio of the number of times that our team hears thank

you really need to be on par or in front of the

number of times that they hear, hey, I need insert blank.

Right? Yes.

It’s all our jobs.

It’s why we’re here.

We’re here to get our jobs done.

But there’s just something incredible about the simple act of

taking 2 seconds to say, hey, I see you.

That’s incredible work that you’ve

done, I really appreciate it.

I could see how that you went

above and beyond and that’s just awesome.

So thanks for what you’re yep.

Fantastic.

Andrew, I recall once you referring to employees that

even left the practice as graduates of maybe you

could tell us a little bit about your vision

on recruiting or retaining, then also ultimately allowing talent

to move on when it’s right for them. Right.

Yes.

So it’s always a moment where sometimes I have to come

in my office and cry under the desk for a few

minutes while we figure out how we’re going to do this.

But we really do see that as a thing to celebrate.

Right.

When somebody takes an opportunity that they’re going to

professionally grow and they’re going to be able to

do more for the family in what they’re creating

and earning or stepping into a role where we

have watched them grow, we’ve watched them evolve, we’ve

watched their knowledge and their skills and their abilities

just get honed and improved.

And they’re taking a step into a job

where they’re going to continue that process.

We think it’s something to celebrate.

It’s not fun when you have turnover.

A lot of the time we’ve built relationship

with these people and we know them, they

know us and we love each other, right?

I mean, there’s a lot of camaraderie that’s there

but it’s just like family when you live in

different cities and different states and different areas.

Just because you move on from a team

doesn’t mean that that’s dissipated or gone, right?

And so we think of it

not as leaving, but as graduating.

And it’s really served us well in the sense of

people feel more appreciated when they recognize that their leaders

don’t just see them as cogs in a wheel, right?

But when they see them as people who bring

talents and gifts and skills that we’re not just

trying to eke the value out of, but that

we’re trying to empower and bring forth.

Help them be the best that they can be.

We really believe that people show up to work and

they want to win, they want to do good work.

And so we see ourselves not as just we

got to get stuff done, but we see ourselves

as how do we help people thrive?

Right.

And that way you can really have more intentional

actions within the practice to make sure recognition is

really part of the DNA of the organization.

Andrew, I think we’re actually getting close

to the end of our time.

So in summary, I think the best way to

move from the great resignation, maybe the great motivation,

is to ensure that we really celebrate all of

our hardworking staff in an intentional way.

Show off your team on LinkedIn, institute these

Kudos programs, these Cheers programs and highlight the

small successes as well as the large successes.

So thank you so much Andrew for joining us today

on SurgiSnacks for our special Labor Day episode.

Wish you all a happy holiday and I

think it’s now time for our energy drink.

You don’t need that energy drink, you get so

much energy from your team and your staff.

So cheers.

Thanks Justin.