Recognized excellence in clinical outcomes and patient satisfaction makes Gastroenterology Consultants of Savannah one of the leading digestive disease health care facilities in Coastal Georgia. Our physicians are board certified in both internal medicine and gastroenterology.
Our physician owned outpatient ambulatory surgery center, the Endoscopy Center of Coastal Georgia, is located adjacent to our main building on Stephenson Avenue. Since 2003, we have performed over 98,000 procedures in our state-of-the-art facility. Now, endoscopic procedures can be performed at your convenience in our pleasant and high-quality environment. GCS has 6 employed Gastroenterologist, 6 employed PAs and a total staff of over 100 employees.
Accreditation is important, because an outside independent agency performs rigorous inspections and certifies that the center is in accordance with rules, regulations, and standards for high quality care. From the day we opened our doors, we’ve been fully accredited.
One of the biggest challenges facing today’s health care is having access to high quality physicians. If you need to be hospitalized, GCS has hospital privileges at St. Joseph’s Candler and Memorial Health. GCS is always striving to improve high quality health care. They have appointments available in Savannah, Pooler, Springfield, Richmond Hill, and Bluffton.
St. Joseph’s Candler has 45 Family Medicine providers and another 30 Internal Medicine physicians. Overall, there are close to 160 total Primary Care physicians in the catchment area. When talking to CEO Spencer Luke he said “Our practice is growing. I mean, and that's where Savannah is, you know. The area is growing tremendously, and people are flocking to Savannah, but the area is landlocked, so a lot of people are moving out to counties like Rincon and Effingham County and then Bryan County, and then even Bullitt County. So, the market is huge, and only growing, especially if we start doing outreach.”
Due to the growth, GCS is expanding and doubling the size of their ASC. This is expected to double their volume and further increase their market share. Over the last 3 years they have spent over $150K on renovations like new flooring, signage, paint, upgraded lighting, landscaping, and over making the facility really sparkle.
Instead of having all referrals make an appointment to see one of our providers for a basic colonoscopy screening, Spencer hired a nurse just to do the direct access. When a Colon screening referral comes in it gets sent to the direct access coordinator. She's going to review that referral to see if it's a true screening. Verify basic things like; do they have a positive Color Guard? Do they have complaints because they they're bloated or any other standard reason for referral? She looks at it to see if it's a true screening. If it is a true screening. Based on information that she has. She'll pick it up and call the patient right there. Go through the whole list of questions of medical history, family, social history, medications, all that. If everything checks out, she sends that referral directly to her respective procedure scheduler who calls the patient and books the appointment or books the procedure, so the patient never has to come into the office. Approximately 62% of all screening referrals that come in are eligible for direct access. So, the other 38% are ones that need to be seen so she will send that over to a referral scheduler that calls the patient to come in and schedule an appointment.
Overall, the company is doing great financially. They have zero debt (minus the real estate they just purchased for the ASC expansion). Overall, Gastroenterology Consultants is up 38% vs 2022. Then Endoscopy suite alone, Gross Profit is up 17.8%, net income is up 71% over 2022. Once the ASC expansion is complete, they anticipate this number to increase drastically.
When speaking to Spencer about the financial situation of the group he responded with:
“We have no debt. No, we have a lot of credit available to us. We don't use it. We have the only debt we have is the space for the new building that our property holdings owns and the lot behind us. We have about 28-months of cash on hand, and monthly positive cash flow.”
One reason for the financial growth this last year was to bring all the billing in-house. Prior to last year the group outsourced all our billing, this year they added a group of 13 people, we added 13 FTE fees. And are saving over $300,000 a year in fees. Not just that but having people that are invested in the practice and want to get every dollar that’s owed has made a huge difference.
In Savannah, there are two private practice groups that make up all the Gastroenterology service lines. Gastroenterology Consultants of Savannah provide at Candler & St. Josephs hospitals and those two hospitals send most of their referrals to GCoS. The head of Marketing for Candler Hospital brings all the new primary care providers around to the office, so we get to meet them and establish a relationship from the beginning.
The competing group in the area is the Center for Digestive & Liver Health, which is part of United Digestive (a large Private Equity backed GI group). They work predominantly at Memorial Health Medical Center, which sends most of their referrals to the group. This group does take call at Candler & St. Josephs, for their own patients, so they do have some interactions with our team.
When asked how the relationship with the other group the providers from GCoS said:
“You know, they do their thing. We do ours. You know, we see each other at the hospital and there's not any friction during this. I mean, there's just from the standpoint of, we're us and they're them but there's not any issues.”
