Selecting the right staff for your center

Even though ambulatory surgery centers have proven to be an effective health care delivery service, the success of the concept to a great extent is due to the employees who staff them. The method in which management deals with these employees will have a direct impact on the success of the center. Surgery centers have relatively few employees with which to continually prove the facility to be a viable alternative to other surgical services. Because of this, management's decisions, as they relate to personnel administration, frequently have to be more precise than those made in larger institutions. These decisions start with the recruitment process and continue through every phase of personnel management. The spirit in which these decisions are made should be one of causing the employee to grow in their particular position, even at the risk of the employee accepting a better position with another employer. While the employee's performance is critical to the success of the center, proper staffing is essential to ensure that salary expenses do not escalate to the point that revenue is being spent for unproductive manhours. This requires an ongoing monitoring process combined with the flexibility to adjust to sporadic case load demands. As health care becomes more competitive, there will be even greater need to effectively manage the center's human resources. To agement must be creative in its pursuit of setting employees to function in a manner which results in job satisfaction for themselves and exception service to the physician and patient.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)