Partnering for Innovation: Break the Mold and Let Vendors Work for You

By Bonni Kaplan DeWoskin, Vice President of Marketing, MedSpeed

To solicit the most competitive bid for goods or services, healthcare organizations frequently issue a traditional Request for Proposal (RFP) to various vendors. Sure, a traditional RFP should get you the best price on beds for your new hospital wing, but it may not be the most effective way to solicit proposals for services because purchasing services is often very different.

An RFP predetermines the right solution for a problem, which makes sense for product purchases, but could mean missed opportunities when purchasing services.

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Use Your Data for Strategic Impact on Value

We live in a world overflowing with data. I’ve written before about big data and the danger of focusing on data to the exclusion of driving meaningful insights. Without using data effectively, we can’t affect positive change.

The HealthLeader’s report, Impactful Analytics: Driving Clinical, Financial, and Cultural Change had some excellent insights on how healthcare organizations can utilize data to drive meaningful change and create value. HealthLeaders noted: “Developing operational and strategic imperatives from all that data is dependent upon analytics…Leaders are making critical decisions on the tools that will help them make sense of their data to not only drive smart clinical decision-making, but to allocate scarce resources toward gaining efficiency and competing on cost.”

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Supply Chain Is All About Value

A blog post by the chairperson of the American Council of Sourcing and Procurement Executive poses a very interesting idea. That the job of the chief procurement officer has changed so much over the past few years that the title is no longer accurate. Most who conduct this job today do far more than source, buy and manage the supply chain.

As a company that works closely with those involved in supply chain, we know firsthand that supply chain touches every area within an organization. As a result, supply chain has the direct ability to create value across all areas of an organization.

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Healthcare Logistics and Transportation: Industry growth that delivers value

Since MedSpeed’s inception, we’ve believed in the important role healthcare logistics and transportation can play in the healthcare industry. A recent global report about the growth of the healthcare transportation services market studies that question.

According to the 151-page report for an analysis conducted by IndustryARC, healthcare transportation/logistics is a burgeoning business with significant projected growth. IndustryARC estimates that the global healthcare transportation services market will reach $93.2 billion in 2021. That reflects a compounded annual growth rate (CAGR) of 4.17% from $73.48 billion in 2015.

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When the Low Hanging Fruit Has Been Picked, What’s Next? Value!

New reimbursement models have forced hospitals and health systems to go after all of the low hanging expenses they can. But cost-cutting alone—stuff and staff—will not produce the total savings needed. A recent article in HealthLeaders points out that successful healthcare organizations are taking a much closer look at their supply chain in order to create strategic savings opportunities.

In the article, Steve Cashton, director of purchasing and contracting at Boston-based Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC), a teaching hospital of Harvard Medical School, says, “You really can’t cut your way to success by reducing staff so we started looking at where we can improve our margins with the supply chain.”

A Change in the Wind

I suspect many of us in this industry have been having the same types of conversations over the last three weeks. Now that the Affordable Care Act (ACA) is moving forward, we all will continue what will certainly be a long journey towards changing the way healthcare does business. Value-based purchasing, creation of accountable care organizations and national bundled payment pilots will force healthcare to strike the balance between cost and quality, without sacrificing either.

To me, this change in how we do business means that some of the truths we have always known need to be challenged. For example, in the purchased services world

Changing the Conversation

I strongly believe that healthcare transportation is one of the missing links in healthcare today – a missing link in improving care quality, accountability and the patient experience. Seeing articles in the news about healthcare transportation gives me confidence that perhaps I am not the only one with that belief.

One such article from the May 2011 cover story of The Journal of Healthcare Contracting titled “Get on the Move!” by Robert Handfield, Ph.D, was especially interesting. In the article, Dr. Handfield reveals the results of his survey of Integrated Delivery Networks (IDNs) and Healthcare systems, as well as in-depth interviews conducted with executives and providers. His goal in conducting the study was to learn more about how healthcare leaders satisfy their transportation needs and develop a recommended methodology for tackling this important issue.

Driving Results

At MedSpeed, things have been busy and are getting busier. You may have noticed that we’ve launched a new website in order to better define the role and value of healthcare transportation and showcase our efforts to help move healthcare forward. As part of this next phase, we are seeking to create a dialogue about the future of healthcare, here in the form of a blog.

We have chosen to name this blog “Driving Results” because driving results is exactly what the right healthcare transportation should do: drive better patient experiences and better results for healthcare organizations. Our goal for this forum is to support that mission by engaging and collaborating with you and other like-minded healthcare industry leaders. We hope to work together to become a powerful voice with real impact in moving healthcare forward.

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