DISC’s Karen Reiter Honored as ASC Leader of the Year

DISC Surgery Center at Newport Beach administrator Karen Reiter, RN, CNOR, RNFA, CASC has been named ASC Leader of the Year by OR Manager. The prestigious award was presented to Reiter at this year’s OR Manager Conference Awards Ceremony, which recognizes perioperative leaders making strides to better the experience of patients, improve operations, drive innovation and inspire the next generation of OR leaders.

The ASC Leader of the Year award honors an outstanding ASC leader who wears many hats and takes an active role in setting up and advancing their outpatient surgery center to deliver high-quality patient care.

This year, Reiter and her team will provide individualized care to approximately 900 spine surgery patients in DISC’s attentive, nurturing environment. Reiter claims the key to success is preparing the patient for the experience through preoperative and postoperative education.

“I am both humbled and exhilarated to see my efforts recognized by such a respected organization in our industry. I’m also incredibly proud of the entire DISC team without whom DISC’s success – and this award – would have never been possible,” she said, following an awards ceremony that took place on October 18.

“With over 22 years of experience, Karen Reiter has managed and led the DISC team in developing a high-acuity spine model for the outpatient world. She transitioned DISC from its initial out-of-network status to an in-network provider, and she is now instrumental in developing a physician-first, payor-driven global billing program," said DISC’s founding director Robert S. Bray, Jr., MD in recommending Reiter for the recognition. "This work encompasses all the nuances of educating and transitioning the payors to become working partners in the development of a sustainable billing structure that will move forward into the value-based care market.

“Throughout this process, Karen has always maintained a quality-first approach. She has carefully collected data throughout our history and benchmarked us against every national benchmark. With her guidance, DISC has met or exceeded all analysis points across the board. Karen has consistently maintained a 98% plus net promoter score for patient satisfaction.”