Becker’s Healthcare -- Spine and Orthopedic Podcast
Reducing Burnout and Boosting Revenue in ASCs
10 Dec 2025
In this episode, Linda Bedwell, CEO, ASCend Specialists & Audra Wallace, Director of Clinical Success, Subflow Health, explain how ASCs can reduce burnout, modernize outdated processes, and improve financial performance by simplifying workflows and better supporting frontline teams. They share practical steps leaders can take now to build a more efficient and sustainable path forward.This episode is sponsored by Subflow.
Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
Hi, everyone. This is Lucas Voss with Becker's Healthcare. Thanks so much for tuning in to the Becker's Healthcare podcast series. Very excited to have you. Today, we're talking about reducing burnout and boosting revenue in ASC's workflow and tech priorities for this year and, of course, 2026.
And joining me for today's discussion, very excited to have them both, Audra Wallace, Director of Clinical Success at Supflow Health, and Linda Betwell, CEO at Ascend Specialists. Audra and Linda, so great to have you.
Chapter 2: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
Thanks for being here today.
Thank you for having us. Yes, thank you. It's a pleasure.
Great to have you both. I do want to start off with introductions for our audience here. If you want to just share a little bit about yourself and your work in healthcare, Audra, we'll start off with you.
Hi, absolutely. I am first and foremost a clinician by trade and training over 10 years in mostly the acute setting. I'm a physical therapist, but in coordinating what we're talking about today, I saw firsthand how administrative friction really impacts me as a clinician. And that's the perspective I'm bringing and I've brought on to myself.
and serve as the Director of Clinical Success at Subflow Health, where my role essentially is to bridge the large gap between much of our clinical reality and operational technology that exists today.
So my background gives me a really unique vantage point to help evaluate workflows, not just as processes, but really as a lived experience and burden that I have felt for clinicians and our patients.
Excited to bring that perspective to the conversation here today. Very important as well. Linda, over to you.
Yeah, well, I'm also on the clinical field. I've nursed by trade. I've been a nurse over 40 years. So number one, it makes me old. But number two, I've had the honor or the frustration of watching us proceed through the clinical times decade after decade. I really never thought I'd be sitting here today talking about
being efficient in healthcare because we're like the most inefficient industry out there. There's no doubt about it. And especially as I've gotten older and more in the leadership and administrative role and watching how people are people as in insurance companies. The people that are helping us supposedly grow in our field are the ones that are actually killing us in our field.
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Chapter 3: How do Audra and Linda's backgrounds influence their perspectives on healthcare?
I've been running surgery centers for over 25 years. I've worked for just about every management company out there in one shape or form from and all the way down to independent physician-owned facilities. I've used almost every software out there at one point or time.
So I've gathered a lot of information, and it's really an honor to, at this point in my life, be able to share everything that I've learned with hopefully prospective clients and just the healthcare community out there in the surgery center world.
And the how to get there is an important part of today's conversation. I think we'll talk about more in a little bit. That's really, really key. And it was certainly part of a recent webinar that we hosted together with Subflow. And there was a lot of talk about these legacy processes like Paper workflows. Yes, that is real, dear audience.
Paper workflows in 2025 and 2026, but also phone trees, manual documentation. There's all kinds of things that are still sort of fueling that burnout crisis that we're seeing within the industry. What's one workflow that you believe leaders most underestimate in terms of its true emotional or financial cost to staff? Audra, I would love to start off with you here on this one.
Yeah, I think the biggest thing is the pre-op clarification cycle, the ambiguous nature that patients don't understand what they're supposed to do and when they're supposed to do it. That workflow of all of the communications that need to occur and not just communication, but actual understanding the health literacy piece.
that exists, how do staff members have the time to engage with patients as the patients need to be? How do they have the time to figure out how the patient needs to be engaged and then actually take the steps to engage that patient in that way so that the patient has
the best understanding and the most learning occurs so that, you know, that only improves outcomes if the patient is actually prepared and shows up for whatever needs to occur. So any type of ambiguous instruction is creating anxiety for our patients, is creating lack of efficiency for our staff. And it's a real drain on the humans involved, not to mention the cost of wasted time.
So emotionally, too, that affects the humans involved because the staff members got into this field to actually help people. Most likely, you know, that's most of us what we would say. And so when it comes to actually doing all the checklists and the tasks, if they're not helping the human on the other side, then it's exhausting to the to the clinicians as well.
Linda, I saw you chuckle there a little bit when I mentioned the paper piece, which again, still baffles me in 2025. Yeah, yes. What's one workflow that you think leaders most underestimate in terms of this pressure and this true emotional strain and financial strain to staff?
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Chapter 4: What are the emotional and financial costs of administrative friction in ASCs?
Do they have an implementation team that actually understands the workflows and And it's trying to get to understand how do you currently do it? Could it be done better? How can our technology help you do it better? You know, that literally is my whole job now.
And part of what I love it, I've been a part of, you know, quality improvement committees and efficiency committees at these large organizations and, you know, If you don't actually try to understand what is our current workflow and what is our ideal workflow and what does it take to bridge that gap, then the piece of technology isn't any good if the workflow underneath it is completely broken.
As long as the, the people are understanding the workflow, how to make it better and can help your team implement it. I laugh frequently that I work at a technology company because I am the least tech savvy person, but that's possibly the most helpful thing for our clients is if I can do it, anyone can do it.
And so trying to understand, um, how is it going to affect the humans on the other side, um, and actually improve their lives, I think, um, You test it with them and they say yes, then you're a go. Because there's also so many technologies that as a clinician, our higher ups bought and spent all this money on. And then it was either too complicated or didn't do what it was supposed to do.
And so we never used it. And then it's just a whole bunch of wasted time and energy and effort and meetings after meetings. So those are kind of the big points for me.
Well, and it comes back to what Linda was saying earlier too, when we are evaluating, that's really the critical word is evaluating, right? What do the workflows actually look like? Where does technology fit in?
But actually doing the job of evaluating these tools, evaluating what helps organizations is so critical in determining what are the differentiators and the difference makers that can actually make a difference for organizations, which is so key. I want to spend a little bit of time looking ahead to next year and possibly beyond, looking ahead to the future a little bit.
What's one thing ASE leaders should prioritize in the next year to support both efficiency and also financial sustainability? And what's sort of the first step they can take right now to be able to be prepared for 2026 and beyond? Linda, we'll start with you.
I think you need to do a quick assessment of what all technology you have currently. Re-evaluate at this point. If it's not a technology that positions itself to move forward, then you might need to look somewhere else. And that's really hard to do. Really, really hard. And, you know, surgery centers... are the heartbeat of my life. You know, I've watched so much good and so much bad.
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Chapter 5: Which workflows are most underestimated by leaders in healthcare?
So yes, technology is going to make us more efficient. I believe it's going to make my, our employees happier and, And happy employees make happy administrators. So that's a very good thing.
It's a holistic approach that then leads to, again, we talk about human in the loop. The human is still at the center of everything. The people are at the center of everything, which is so, so key. Audra and Linda, thanks again for being here and for your time and insights today. It's great to have you both.
Thank you. It was a pleasure.
And we also want to thank our podcast sponsor, Subflow Health. You can tune into more podcasts from Becker's Healthcare by visiting our podcast page at beckershospitalreview.com.