From the Editor

“If you don’t know where you’re going, you might end up some place else.”

BY WILLIAM J. FISHKIND, MD, FACS
CHIEF MEDICAL EDITOR

Baseball great Yogi Berra may have said it first — and for a laugh. But it’s true that to reach our destination, whatever it may be, we have to know where we want to go and how to get there. This month, in our third issue of 2015, we talk about strategic planning in the surgery center. Strategic planning compels us to scrutinize our tactics and helps us envision a road map for future success. Contributing writer Virginia Pickles interviews experts who share their best advice on everything from writing a strategic plan to assessing a center’s current status and setting priorities for growth. As Regina Boore, RN, BSN, MS, chief executive officer of Progressive Surgical Solutions, says, “Surgery center owners can’t afford to be complacent. They need to be looking critically at their operations, assessing the market and planning how to respond to outside forces, as well as internal challenges.” And so we are.

Even as we plan for and look forward to the future, we also must take time to reflect on the past and the contributions of special individuals who have helped us get where we are today.

Lou Sheffler, who passed earlier this year after a struggle with cancer, was just such a groundbreaker. A longtime board member of the Outpatient Ophthalmic Surgery Society, Lou understood opportunity and alternatives. He was talented, articulate and accomplished at presenting information in both a persuasive and principled way. Lou provided dependable, accurate counsel to our OOSS leaders and was both a sounding board and a voice of conscience for as long as I can remember. He facilitated OOSS as it matured from a small group of entrepreneurial surgeons into the prodigious organization it is today. He was our friend. We will miss his spirit; however, I assure you, his example will continue to inspire the new trailblazers.

“I always skate to where I think the puck is going to be.” … more good advice from the sports world — this time, Wayne “The Great One” Gretzky. Strategic planning, coupled with the examples of leaders such as Lou Sheffler, can help us know with greater certainty where that puck is going to be. Let’s gaze into the future, fortified with information, and select a path that reveals our genuine character as the providers of nothing short of superlative patient care. ■

William J. Fishkind, MD, FACS, is Chief Medical Editor of The Ophthalmic ASC and past President of OOSS. He is Director of the Fishkind, Bakewell & Maltzman Eye Care and Surgery Center in Tucson, Ariz.