2. Our Grove Road location in West Greenville, one of
two current locations POA has offices at, the other
being on International Drive in East Greenville.
3. POA & Bon Secours
Mission Statements
• POA: Piedmont Orthopaedic Associates is a team of orthopedic
physicians and surgeons who are committed to providing excellent
orthopedic care. Each orthopedist at our Greenville offices offers
patients throughout the Upstate, SC area advanced treatment options
and dedicated high-quality care.
• The Mission of Bon Secours Health System is to bring compassion to
health care and to be Good Help to Those in Need®, especially those
who are poor and dying.
As a System of caregivers, we commit ourselves to help bring people
and communities to health and wholeness as part of the healing
ministry of Jesus Christ and the Catholic Church.
4. Piedmont Orthopaedics was started in
Greenville in 1949 by Dr. Frank Stelling and
Dr. Warren White.
• In 1994, merged with Orthopaedic Associates of
Greenville , which brought on Dr. James Jennings,
Jr. and Dr. Christopher Kavolous.
• In 2000 the practice was renamed Piedmont
Orthopaedic Associates, a name that is still used
today, and the International Drive office was added
to the practice.
• The practice has now joined the Bon Secours
Medical Group of Greenville, and works with the
61 other practices in the area.
5. POA has 17 board-certified physicians (15 surgeons, 2 non-
operative) on staff, as well as 5 physician’s assistants and a
nurse practitioner.
• POAs physicians’ areas of specialty are foot & ankle,
hip and knee (total joint replacement), sports medicine
& arthroscopy, back & spine care and surgery, and
upper extremity specialists.
POA also offers physical therapy services, as well as MRI
and x-ray on location at both offices.
6. Departments
POA consists of 5 departments:
• Appointments
• Where the cycle of care begins, the appointments department handles all patients calling in to
schedule appointment, as well as calling patients after POA receives a referral from another practice.
• Front Desk
• The front desk is the first to come into contact with patients, and they handle all of the paperwork,
including patient history, patient insurance information and consent form. Front desk also handles
collecting outstanding fees from patients after their appointments
• Clinical
• The powerhouse of the practice, the clinical department encompasses all physicians, physician’s
assistants, medical assistants, x-ray and MRI techs, and physical therapists.
• Billing
• The billing department deals most directly with insurance companies and making sure
the practice is compensated for its services, as well as dealing with any billing
discrepancies patients may have.
• Administrative
• The administrative department, which I worked with during my internship, is in charge
of all business aspects of the practice, and manages the practice on a day-to-day basis.
7. My Roles
As an intern at POA, I began by shadowing employees from
each department to gain an understanding of the patient care
cycle, from appointments to billing.
At both the front desk and appointments I had the
opportunity to directly interact with patients, whether it was
checking them in, collecting copays, or scheduling
appointments after we had received a referral.
8. My Roles
Once I had learned how both offices of the practice were run, I
was given projects to help the administrative team.
• These projects varied from:
• Simple data entry of referrals
• Check-in kiosk interface design
• Lean analysis of the referral process
• Cost containment project presentation
Much of my time was spent in Microsoft Excel, either entering
data or creating spreadsheets for data I had collected.
Once the projects became more complex I collaborated with
physicians, administrators and I.T. to ensure I had the project
headed in the correct direction.
9. Me, working on the cost containment project, on the phone with
one of the commercial cleaning companies.
10. Project: BSMG Cost
Containment
This project is ongoing, and is a project that includes the
entire Bon Secours Medical Group. The goal of this project
is to present to all 62 practice managers, a cost containment
plan that they may opt-in to. My responsibility is to prepare
the maintenance and janitorial portion of the presentation.
This consists of getting quotes and negotiating prices from
several commercial cleaning companies, and compiling that
data into a format that can easily be compared to the
maintenance plan of the average BSMG practice.
11. Project: Kiosk Interface
Design
This project involved creating a flow chart that detailed the
decision tree behind POA’s new check-in kiosk. To do this,
I first went to the front desk employees and worked with
them to make up a checklist of all that was needed to check
a returning patient in to the practice. I then designed a flow
chart based on the front desk criteria that would guide our
I.T. department in designing the kiosk interface.
12. Project: Digitizing the
Referral Process
This project was the first assigned to me, and my goal was
to prove that moving the referral process to a completely
digital format was worth it, in terms of efficiency, patient
access, and cost-effectiveness. To do this, I expanded the
referral process, interviewing various appointments staff to
nail down any extraneous steps in the process. After
presenting this information, I worked with other
administrators to design a decision tree for appointments
that will streamline the process, and pave the way for a
digital referral process in the future.
13. Project: Physician Access
Report
This project was a monthly report focused on detailing how
accessible each physician and specialty was for the patients.
I did this by gathering scheduling data from each
physician’s team of medical assistants, and turning it all into
an easily interpreted graphic for physicians and other
administrators. This data was then used to start any new
access projects, if needed.
14. Final Thoughts
In my time at Piedmont Orthopaedic Associates, I learned a
lot from the hands on experience you can’t get in the
classroom. I learned first hand how a large surgical practice
is run, and all that is going on behind the scenes. I enjoyed
my time there, but my experience has also opened my eyes
to other opportunities in healthcare that are also worth
exploring in addition to administration.
