Setting the Stage for Greater Expansion and Influence
Welcome South Carolina ENT, Allergy & Sleep Medicine (SCENT), a 10-location practice and the first practice to join SENTA from South Carolina. The practice was founded in 2002 by Robert Puchalski, MD, FAAOA, and now includes nine board-certified physicians who provide services in ENT, allergy and sleep medicine in 10 locations.
Dr. Puchalski
SCENT also brings several unique services to the organization: four sleep labs accredited by the American Academy of Sleep Medicine, in-house speech therapy and a full-service Vestibular & Balance Center to address dizziness and fall prevention. “We’re proud to offer these services to our community and hope that there is a potential for expanding these services to other parts of the SENTA organization,” Dr. Puchalski says.
“We were drawn to SENTA due to its physician-led clinical decision-making, its focus on growth over cost structure and its commitment to the patient experience. Compared to the other potential partners and private equity firms we spoke to, SENTA’s track record, managerial acumen and emphasis on growth stood out. We felt like SENTA was best positioned to help us achieve our strategic goals, with just the right mix of experience, resources and energy,” he says.
SCENT is in the middle of an exciting growth period with the development of a 20,000-square-foot flagship office and ambulatory surgery center. The SENTA partnership will bring operational support to this endeavor, making it the best in class for South Carolina.
“We were reaching a plateau in our practice. The growth needs of the practice began to exceed the risk tolerance of the partners and the operational bandwidth of the organization. With the partnership, we hope to accelerate our gains in South Carolina market share, and, in so doing, improve the benefits for our employees, the satisfaction of our providers and the outcomes for our patients,” he says. Dr. Puchalski’s primary goal is to grow through recruitment and expansion quickly. “Our hope is to add talented, bright folks to new sites in our organization. By partnering with SENTA, we’re confident that the robust corporate infrastructure and unique financial incentives will help us recruit, hire and retain the next generation of talent in our expanding market,” he says.
“We’re excited to be part of the SENTA family. It’s refreshing to have a capable partner that is this dedicated to the success of SCENT and the other member practices,” Dr. Puchalski says.
Even a Large, Successful Practice Can Achieve More Through Affiliation
Letting employees across the 10 locations of South Carolina Ear Nose and Throat (SCENT) know that the group was affiliating with SENTA was a big task for Executive Director Pam Kirby and the other managers. The practice already had a layered management system with heads for each line of business, team leads and five office managers. Each week, members of those teams receive an email with operations updates, so word had been getting out, Pam says.
Pam Kirby
However, the effort got a big assist from SENTA representatives when they came in for a town hall presentation. “That created an opportunity to meet face-to-face with SENTA leadership, and that went a long way to minimizing concerns because everyone could see that these leaders were making themselves available to answer questions,” she says.
Those connections have stayed, too. It wasn’t just one trip in and out. “SENTA leaders have come to our offices many times during the transition, and they’re still coming in to see where we need support,” she says. That level of attention has paid off. For example, SCENT has a fairly complex payroll system, but the IT team has already been working on streamlining the process. Similarly, she is seeing support with accounts payable and revenue cycle management that will allow employees at SCENT to use their time more efficiently.
On a more big-picture level, SENTA is helping the practice set up key performance indicators that will help them look at business in a new way. “Just because we’re a larger practice doesn’t mean we’re immune to the issues that come up day-to-day in all practices. It can be challenging to look at strategies for long-term, mid-term and short-term goals and develop the workstreams to get there. We still have the same fires that pop up that we need to attend to,” she says.
One example is that several members of the SCENT team were recently in Atlanta, Georgia, to tour some SENTA practices. They were gathered in a hotel lobby when their phones started pinging. A power outage not only knocked out power to three locations, but it also knocked out the mainframe computer system, blocking access to their communications systems and patient records for the entire business. They all started working on the problem, but “with SENTA’s partnership, we are going to be able to convert to a cloud-based practice management system so a power outage in one location doesn’t impact every location,” she says. It’s a big task, so she’s grateful for SENTA’s leadership on it.
Another area in which SENTA can help boost practice success is in building its first ambulatory surgery center (ASC). The process had begun before the affiliation, but “SENTA has several ASCs under its umbrella already, so we have toured those and feel confident that we don’t need to reinvent the wheel in terms of processes and inventory decisions. We know what pitfalls to watch out for, and that will make us more efficient. With SENTA, we will be able to achieve success in a much shorter timeframe,” she says.
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