Becker’s Healthcare -- Spine and Orthopedic Podcast
Janet L. Carlson, MSN, BSN, RN, NE-BC, FACHE, Vice President of ASC Operations at Commonwealth Pain & Spine | Advanced Surgical Institute
22 Nov 2025
On this episode, Janet L. Carlson, MSN, BSN, RN, NE-BC, FACHE, Vice President of ASC Operations at Commonwealth Pain & Spine | Advanced Surgical Institute, joins the podcast to discuss advancements with AI, the growth of the ASC space over the next year including the rise of multi-specialty centers, and how her team continues to prioritize patient satisfaction.
Chapter 1: What is Janet Carlson's background and role in ASC operations?
Hello, this is Francesca Matthews with the Becker's ASC Review Podcast. I'm thrilled to be joined today by Janet Carlson, MSN, BSN, RN, Vice President of ASC Operations at Commonwealth Pain and Spine Advanced Surgical Institute. Janet, thank you so much for being here today. Thank you for having me, Francesca. Absolutely.
To start us off, could you please just introduce yourself and tell us a little bit about your background?
Sure. So Janet Carlson, I am a registered nurse. I began working in the ambulatory space at a multi-specialty center in the early 2000s. And I've worked in every role in an ASC and I've led some very successful surgery centers. And now I am in charge with creating, designing, operationalizing and scaling our ambulatory operations for Commonwealth Pain and Spine.
And our ASCs are under a new name and logo. It's called Advanced Surgical Institute. And so I'm currently working right now on building four ASCs across three states.
Absolutely. Yeah. It sounds like you're kind of an ASC jack of all trades. So it'll be great to get further insights from you. Yeah. What are you, what are the top three trends that you're following in healthcare and ASCs today?
You know, I know everyone says AI, but I really think that's an important component as an adjunct technology capability to help us better serve our patients and For example, having an automated call system with an integrated AI feature that will help be responsive to patient calls to clinics and to surgery centers, keep that communication going with patients because often they get frustrated.
They have to get switched around to multiple people. They don't end up talking to somebody. So I think AI is something that we're just going to see more increased use of in the space as well as, you know, enhancing our existing workflows. Another example would be using AI for a template for your EHR charting in an ASC.
And that would allow you just to populate specifics to the patient case at hand. But it would be very helpful in your throughput times in an ASC, reducing some of the manual entry and charting requirements that you have today. So AI is one of the things I'm watching. Another thing I'm watching is the increased migration of higher acuity cases into the ASC space.
Obviously, we know that Total Joint started doing this gosh, 20 years ago, and then spine followed next. And now the hot thing in the newest space for ASC service lines is cardiovascular, peripheral vascular, and interventional radiology. So I'm following those trends as well. Surgery centers are also investing in equipment like a DaVinci robot so that they could offer some of the
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Chapter 2: How is AI transforming patient communication in ASCs?
a place to do cases. Oftentimes, independent surgeons don't have guaranteed block time in a health system if they're not employed with the health system. And so ASCs are the perfect solution for those surgeons who are looking for a home and looking for guaranteed block time.
Absolutely. Yeah, for sure. And I'm curious, is there anything else I haven't asked about today that you think is important in this conversation?
I think that we've covered most of the topics. I could talk for a very long time about ASCs. There's so much going on. It's such a dynamic space. I think another topic that is worth exploring, possibly another conversation is the partnership with anesthesia and how to optimize a patient preoperatively. And so that way,
we can, with an elective procedure, we can plan to have a patient taken care of. And since it's elective, there's no rush, but we can optimize the patient for a really great experience on the day of surgery, but also very importantly, post-operatively in their recovery journey. So that is something that I'm following closely is how to best
provide care to these patients and make sure they have excellent outcomes because we're now required to collect patient satisfaction scores. And we'd like to make sure that the patients are having a wonderful experience. They're satisfied. Is there anything we could do to improve their experience or anything we could have done better?
That feedback is very valuable, but that's a new requirement for 2025 for ASCs is the requirement to collect and report your patient satisfactions. So ASCs routinely have very, very high patient satisfaction scores. And I think this is an opportunity for the ASC community to show off those numbers and the experience that we provide.
Absolutely. And I know just in that anesthesia element, there's, I've heard the term kind of the perioperative home a lot in recent months.
And just as technology, you know, advances, as more cases come to the ASC, kind of a lot of anesthesia professionals thinking of themselves more as, you know, somebody who's guiding the patient through those, you know, before and after stages, not just showing up for the procedure. So that's definitely something that's developing.
Yeah, they're an integral part of the whole patient experience and really contribute to the patient optimization preoperatively, as well as to the outcomes postoperatively, which we are obviously very interested in.
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