Kathleen Hickman, RN, BSN, MS, CASC, Administrator and Clinical Director of Dutchess Ambulatory Surgical Center
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What is the background of Kathleen Hickman in the ASC industry?
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Hello, this is Francesca Matthews with the Becker's ASC Review Podcast. I'm thrilled to be joined today by Kathleen Hickman, Administrator and Clinical Director of the Dutchess Ambulatory Surgical Center. Thank you so much for being here today.
Well, thank you for having me. It's my pleasure.
Yeah, of course. To start us off, could you please introduce yourself and tell us a little bit about your background?
Yes, of course. So I am Kathy Hickman. I go by Kathy. Kathleen is my formal name, but yes, I'm part of the ASC industry and proudly I have been working at my center for 25 years this year. I do serve as the administrator. I do now have a clinical director, so I don't have to use that role as much, but my background is nursing. So I am a nurse by trade and I also work part-time as a nurse with my company because I think it's important to be part of that. So I have a master's in healthcare administration, as well as my bachelor's in nursing, and I am CASC certified, and I just love the ASC industry.
Hey, excellent. And we'll just jump into some questions here. To start off kind of broadly, what are the top three trends that you're following in healthcare and ASCs today? Okay.
Well, there are so many trends. I guess if I had to think about what I'm most interested in or thinking about is one, consolidation, number two, AI, and number three, moving higher acuity cases to our settings. Those are my three top trends I'm following.
And what are you most excited about right now?
Well, back to the question two, I guess I am excited about all of those trends because with consolidation, we are seeing a lot more and more AOCs consolidating. A lot of pros and cons with that. We certainly would have better buying power, better economies of scale, and maybe better market clout. Again, it could also decrease competition and a little bit of loss of autonomy, but that's okay. I think that there's enough out there for all of us to share. I am very excited about the increased move for higher acuity cases to our ASCs. I think in New York itself, cardiology has not been approved, but now we're getting towards a closer approval process for adding cardiology to our ASCs and moving out of the hospital settings, as well as total joints.
That is more prominent, but it's becoming more and more in many of the ASCs.
That definitely echoes just things I'm hearing over here on the ASC side of things. Just a little follow-up there. I know total joints and cardiology are both specialties or areas that I know a lot of people are looking at as far as expanding service lines. I'm wondering, since we're still in the very, like you said, early stages of that, how are you thinking about that right now? What are... In these early stages, what can one do to begin to evaluate that and prepare for potentially the expansion of those service lines as they become more widely approved?
Well, I think creating this space in your ASC, and if you're a new build, you can also plan ahead to have that availability in terms of the space to do some of these. Total joints do require a lot of room. So we actually just built our ASC two years ago. We were in a prior location for over 20 years, and we built with the future in mind. So we know that we can add total joints at any time. We have a 23-hour stay room as well. I think maybe ASCs just need to be prepared.
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