Slam-dunk networking in healthcare – the kind that opens a spigot of opportunities and idea-sharing – sometimes comes down to sheer luck. Are your existing contacts pointing you to new ones? Are you seated near like-minded people at conferences or seminars? Are you crossing paths with people from facilities like yours? Do they provide similar types of care?

Administrator/CEO Cindy Burleson and her team at Brunswick Surgery Center, a 100% physician-owned ambulatory surgery center in Leland, N.C., were having no trouble meeting other providers from around the country. They just weren’t feeling as lucky as they’d hoped.

Running a relatively new ASC – opened in 2020 and specializing in orthopedic procedures – they wanted nearby networking partners who were hungry to learn, more reciprocal in their suggestions and examples, fluent in ASC language and unconcerned about working with a “competitor.” They wanted camaraderie.

What they wanted was someone like Jennifer Halverson, administrator/CEO at The Surgery Center at Edgewater, a multi-specialty ASC located 3½ hours away in Fort Mill on the South Carolina side of the border.

They didn’t know Halverson. But Chris Matheson, Brunswick’s Medline sales representative, did. Edgewater is also one of his customers.

So, sometimes you make the luck happen.

“We were talking with Chris one day and said, you know, we feel like we’ve got a really good center here, but there are also some opportunities to get ideas from other people,” Burleson said. “Instead of having to recreate the wheel, if someone else has a better way of doing things, let’s try their way. We can share our successes, and they can share theirs.

“And Chris said, ‘You’re exactly right. And I have some other customers I think would be great who’d be interested in this.’”

Road trips and relationships

That was in 2023. What has developed since is a blend of proactive mutual learning and good, old-fashioned Southern hospitality as Burleson and her leadership team have opened their doors and arms to several other ASCs in the broader region, each a Medline customer supported by Matheson, who suggested they reach out to Brunswick. Since February 2024, staff from five ASCs – most with orthopedics as a focus but also some multi-specialty centers – have traveled to Brunswick, relishing the chance to compare Brunswick’s systems, equipment, strategies and culture to what they have back home.

Each visit is a tailor-made experience.

“Before bringing the other providers in for a tour, we ask them a little bit about what they’re looking for,” Burleson said. “Are they wanting more of the clinical side? Are they wanting to meet with our financial folks? Are they wanting to meet with our materials management?”

Counterparts from each facility then pair off onsite.

“While I meet with the other administrator, our financial teams are meeting together, our materials management teams are meeting together, our sterile processing teams are meeting together, and everybody’s getting the information and experience they want,” Burleson said.

Most of the initial collaboration has been deliberately one-directional, with Brunswick eager to show its guests practices and tools that could be helpful – everything from its approach to hiring and retaining staff to scorecards for physicians and a “total joint camp” for patients receiving total joint replacements. But in February, a couple of members of Burleson’s team hit the road themselves to visit Edgewater.

Of all the new collaborators, the Brunswick leaders are especially close with Halverson. A self-described “social administrator,” she took a team of five to check out Brunswick’s inventory management system in early 2024 and ended up implementing a similar ordering system at Edgewater in December. She also gathered information about Brunswick’s Turbett POD sterilization system – a time-saver from sterilizing surgical instruments separately.

The fruits of the relationship are clear to all.

“If you’re a long-term employee but you never look outside your own center, you never have fresh eyes,” Halverson said. “You don’t know what you’re missing, how the market is evolving. So it’s important to see what somebody else is doing or share with someone else what you’re doing to get ideas to better your facility. You can see what might work for you, or what doesn’t really work but could if you tweak a process here or there.”

Jessica Steele, Brunswick’s director of clinical operations, and Mary Beth Ayres, Brunswick’s pre-op and post-op clinical manager, now call and email Halverson regularly for pulse checks and sharing of ideas.

“It’s a partnership, a friendship and a mutual respect on all ends,” Steele said. “In the healthcare field, there’s often this hesitancy to openly share information, which has always been weird to me. But this is the first time I can honestly say that hasn’t been a barrier at all. No one’s trying to hoard their information. It’s about what we can do for the patient, which is what healthcare should always be about.”

Medline’s role ‘just invaluable’

Matheson, the matchmaker from Medline, attends site visits and sits in on some of the calls, ready to answer questions about Medline products and services if needed. For him, it’s all in a day’s work. But to his customers, it feels like more.

“We weren’t networking to the extent we do now until Medline was involved as our primary supplier and coming in to assist us,” Ayres said. “We thought we were just getting folks who could give us our IV kits or supply our surgical drapes. What we ended up getting was really a relationship that Chris created with us, and a resource that makes us better. And what we came to learn is that he and Medline create this everywhere. What they offer all their customers is much more intensive, more intentional, more purposeful. It’s just invaluable.”

Of the various hats he wears, Matheson considers “problem-solver” the most important.

“Brunswick’s level of partnership with Medline allows us to continue to focus on solutions over and over and over,” he said. “And the solutions we’ve been able to come up with together – besides Brunswick’s own solutions – address problems that other centers also face. Get these centers together to talk, and there are real benefits to collaborating across multiple sites.”

Even before some of her team visited Edgewater, Burleson could name a few of those benefits that have helped Brunswick evolve. For example, Halverson has deeper experience with the electronic medical records system that both facilities use. She’s also a whiz at helpful new ways of analyzing data efficiently. Brunswick always is looking for ways to continually improve, but also to share its practices with other centers seeking the same thing – including several that have met previously with members of Brunswick’s sterile processing department seeking their expertise.

The sense of empowerment when clinicians meet is palpable.

“It’s rewarding and exciting for our team members to stretch themselves,” Burleson said. “They’re getting to grow as leaders because they’re sharing their knowledge of what they’ve gained with someone else.

“It just makes us really proud. I’ve been in healthcare for 30-plus years. My other leaders have been in it 20, 30, 40 years. It’s nice to be able to work at a facility where other providers want to know what you’re doing. It’s also nice that others recognize it’s not about us as separate ASCs. Whether it’s within our four walls or another four walls, it’s about what will ultimately benefit our patients and our communities. Knowledge is not power if you don’t share it.”

Learn more here about how Medline supports ambulatory surgery centers.