Strategic Value Analysis In Healthcare

Weekly Strategic Value Analysis Newsletter

View Archived Strategic Value Analysis Newsletters

Fast Target Savings

Strategic^TM Value Analysis

ValueNet Central^TM Value Analysis Software

Training

About HCP

Client List

Articles and White Papers

Contact HCP

  Click Here to Access the NO Obligation Free Non-Salary Survey to find out what your savings opportunities are for your organization.

February 24, 2005         

by Robert T. Yokl, President

Why Your Cost Reduction Initiatives Must Be A Never Ending Battle?

When You Think You Have Saved Everything There Is To Save, That’s Just The Time To Save More Dollars -- Not Less!

Toyota the undisputed leader in saving money in the auto industry,  recently stunned the auto world when it announced that it will be slashing its costs 30% across the board for the car parts it buys – from air-conditioners and door-assist grips to windshield wipers.

Why?  Because Toyota’s cost-slashing is a never ending battle, not a skirmish.  This enables Toyota to “…meet a whole new set of challenges”, according Katsuaki Watanabe, a vice president at Toyota, from low cost parts producers in China and a stronger yen that are cutting into Toyota’s profits.

Healthcare organizations are facing similar challenges -- to do less with more -- with the impending deep cuts in Medicare and Medicaid that have been proposed in this year’s federal budget.  Are you ready for these new challenges? 

How To Wring The Drops From A Dry Towel

Toyota’s answer to their challenges was to dig and drill down even further into their supply/value chain to root out all waste and inefficiency they had previous missed with there other cost cutting programs. As an example, one of Toyota’s value teams eliminated six of 28 components in their horns resulting in a 40% savings.  They then attacked their interior assist grips above each door, which they reduced from 35 to three. 

Toyota calls this cost-slashing kawaita zokin wo shiboru, or “wringing drops from a dry towel”.  You need to do the same sort of cost-slashing represented in these examples to meet your healthcare organization’s challenges too. These savings can only be achieved by raising the bar on your cost savings to the next level of performance -- beyond price.  

Raising The Bar “The Toyota Way”!

One way Toyota is raising their bar is by collaborating with their parts vendors on the design of new parts, having Toyota value teams tour their vendors’ plants, and by offering suggestions for improving their vendors’ productivity and quality.

Toyota also identified about 180 key parts in their automobiles and then benchmarked them to find the world’s most competitive suppliers of those same parts.  With these benchmarks in hand, Toyota then challenges their suppliers to meet or exceed these 180 benchmarks or they would loose Toyota’s business.

Healthcare organizations can learn much from “The Toyota Way” of managing their cost and quality as these examples attest, since no hospital or system that I have observed has, “Wrung all their drops from their dry towel”.    If you want to know more about ‘The Toyota Way” click on to www.amazon.com and purchase Jeffery Liker’s book “The Toyota Way”: 14 Management Principles Of the World’s Greatest Manufacturer.

MAILBOX

How Can We Obtain Our Clinician’s Buy-In For Our Cost Reduction Proposals.?  J. D.

The #1 Rule for obtaining your clinician’s buy-in to your cost reduction proposals is to remember obtaining buy-in from your clinicians isn’t a one time event, but a process.  A process that changes your hospital or system from a “No” culture to a “Yes” culture (see my Strategic Value Analysis Newsletter for February 15, 2005 article, “How To Eradicate, Eliminate Or At Least Cancel Out The Affects Of The “No” Culture”), so that your clinicians are acclimatized to making needed changes without being pushed and pulled in the wrong direction. Once you understand this truism you will never need to ask this question again, because you will understand the human dynamics that are required in any change.

Bob Yokl, Sr.

Chief Value Strategist

Strategic Value Analysis In Healthcare

800-220-4274

bobpres@strategicvalueanalysis.com

P.S.  If anyone else has a burning question that you would like me to answer, please call or e-mail me and I would be delighted to answer it.

There Is Still “Gold In them Thar Hills”

Radiographic Contrast Media Is Still Ripe With Savings Opportunities For You…Up To 55%.

Our clients are finding up to 55% waste and inefficiency in their radiographic contract media utilization. Why? Because this area of supply chain management has always been known as a “sacred cow” and no one is challenging the utilization of this high price commodity.

The savings I’m talking about isn’t the old the “ionic vs. “nonionic” wars we fought for years.  What I’m talking about is value mismatches and utilization misalignments, such as, purchasing pre-fill syringes that can be prepared in-house vs. purchasing them at an obscene 26% up-charge, or utilizing more contrast media in your pre-filled syringes than is medically or functionally required for each procedure, or leaving precious and costly contrast media at the bottom of oversized bottles that can be recycled for use in your procedures. Don’t let these “sacred cows” go unchallenged!

WARNING: Your Management Is Looking For New Savings Reductions:

DON’T WAIT UNTIL YOU ARE MANDATED TO MAKE “BIG” SAVINGS HAPPEN!

Be Proactive! Don’t Wait For A Crisis To Unfold Or Take You By Surprise!

Move To The Next Level Of Savings Performance "Beyond Price" With the “The Ultimate Value Analysis System”.

If you are ready to move to the next level of savings performance at your healthcare organization, I would strongly suggest that you consider purchasing my new book that is now available at my website http://www.strategicvalueanalysis.com/ultimatevalueanalysis.htm.  In this book, I share with you my award winning system (that has saved 296 hospitals and 24 healthcare systems -- just like yours -- $ 337 million). The "The ULTIMATE VALUE ANALYSIS SYSTEM" will show you, step by step how to plan, organize, manage and attain superior savings in less time with greater success! 

I am now in my 18th year as a healthcare supply chain and value analysis consultant and trainer (30 years in the healthcare business), and you can see from the gray hairs I have paid my dues.   Which means I have learned a great deal about Value Analysis In Healthcare and have developed my quick and easy system that will enable you to avoid all the roadblocks, pitfalls and obstacles that come from developing a program yourself.   I have trained hundreds of hospitals and healthcare systems in the practical and easy to use system of Value Analysis that I am offering here today. Now you too have the opportunity to utilize my secrets that leading healthcare organizations have learned from me to move them to the next level of savings performance (beyond price) for your hospital, system or alternate care facility.

What Are They Saying About the Ultimate Value Analysis Program

"The Ultimate Value Analysis System is not only a good read, but is a "money-saving" system that supply chain professionals have been looking for to re-invent their value analysis programs.  It's a new way of organizing, training, managing and deploying value teams to obtain the best results -- in the shortest possible time."  

Steve Carlson-VP Administration-St. Lukes Hospital and Health Network, Bethlehem, Pennsylvania

"HCP's Ultimate Value Analysis is an outstanding resource for any Healthcare organization attempting to manage its supply chain costs.  It provides a concise "how to process" that will immediately energize your organization, and increase communication interdepartmentally.  The book and training has effectively helped our Health System develop an internal resource of objectively trained, insightful, Value Teams that systematically review our consumption of products and services. Beyond the cost savings results the book has helped us as an organization achieve results quickly and independently."

Perry Miller-Director of Value Analysis, Presbyterian Medical Center,  University of Pennsylvania Health System

Click Here to Learn More

About the Author

Robert T. Yokl, President, The HCP Group, Ltd., has over 35 years of experience as a consultant and manager in the field of Supply Value Chain Management and is one of the country's leading healthcare experts in value analysis, value engineering, Non Salary Expense Reduction and materials management. He is the developer and program leader of the award winning Certified Value Analysis Practitioner Training Program™. Mr. Yokl is also the developer of the healthcare industry's leading ValueNetCentral™ Value Analysis Software. Over the past two decades he has trained thousands of healthcare managers in his patented Strategic Value Analysis™ and Team-Based Project Management™ processes and has assisted scores of organizations in developing their own value management programs. He has published six books, videos and audios on supply/value chain management. His latest book being, “ Strategic Value Analysis™: The #1 Smart Strategy for Taking Cost Out of a Healthcare Organizations’ Healthcare Supply Value Chain”.

_____________________________________________________________

To Be Removed from Our Email List Click Here or Reply to this Email with "Remove" in the Subject Line