Healthcare Value Analysis Hospital Consulting and Benchmarking for Supply Chain Savings

One of the biggest challenges we all face in the management of our value teams is keeping our project managers from getting sidetracked by the demands of their regular job. It’s a balancing act that requires us to be vigilant, patient, and creative in devising strategies and tactics to get the most productivity out of our project managers.

This balancing act starts when value analysis leaders closely link their value team’s goals to their project manager’s goals which helps them stay on track and not drop the ball on their projects. For instance, one of our client’s surgical services value teams set as its goal to save $350,000 in their current fiscal year ending July 1^st. Since this goal was aligned with the goal that was established by the hospital’s director of surgical services, it was well within their scope and responsibility to make these savings happen.

The result of this goal alignment was almost faultless attendance at their team meetings, most of their projects were completed on time and on budget, and no one requested to be relieved of their duties as a project manager. I would call this a “perfect 10” performance for this value team.

Another thing to remember when managing your value team’s performance, since our project managers have other important work to do in their real jobs, is that this is a journey, not a sprint! Yes, we would all like to see our savings and quality improvements done faster, but our ultimate goal should be just getting all of our projects completed.

Teams are now an integral part of the culture at most healthcare organizations today, so it’s our job to understand our value team’s dynamics and be flexible enough to give our project managers, more time, more support and more incentives, to do their teamwork.

P.S. Do we have an opportunity for “Members Only” of our new Value Analysis Leadership Resource Web: A cutting edge benchmarking and utilization exclusive training/coaching program so that you can survive and thrive in the topsy-turvy world of supply chain management. See how you can become a member of the Value Analysis Leadership Resource Web so you won’t miss out on this exclusive coaching program.

By my estimate about 50% of all healthcare organizations have value teams in place to make savings and quality improvements happen. These same organizations might give these teams another name, but their function is always the same – save money!

The easy part to forming a team, is giving the team(s) a name. The hard part is to get the team(s) to perform at peak performance or what I call a “Perfect 10”. There is actually a success formula in obtaining a “Perfect 10” performance from your value team(s). This has four critical ingredients that start with your:

I have seen value teams as large as 35 members that are more like a board of directors than a working team. For decades, it has been an accepted fact that a team with more than 20 members inevitably becomes dysfunctional, risk averse and uncooperative. We have found, after many years of experimentation, that the ideal team size is 14 (4 team leaders and 10 project managers). So remember, that size does matter when forming, reestablishing or reinventing your teamwork.

We have found that if you have homogenous team members who think alike, act alike, and engender group think, you will never have the “creative friction” that is required for “Perfect 10” teams. A much better way to create diversity is to require your team membership to be heterogeneous when team members don’t think alike or act alike and are even renegades, they bring about, through “creative friction”, the best savings ideas or solutions for any project your team is working on at any given time.

If you can’t get your team members to come to meetings and do the hard work between meetings, then you will never reach superior team performance. It’s just that simple! The solution to this challenge is to:

to your value team(s) to guide and monitor your teams’ performance. There are very few project managers that will then skip meetings or not do their project work knowing their bosses are looking over their shoulder.

(b) Keep attendance of your meetings and report these statistics at your monthly value analysis leadership council meetings. We have found this reporting mechanism to be a catalyst for improving team attendances just because it makes this information visible to your senior management.

These are just two important ideas to increase the participation of your value team members almost overnight. But the most indispensable advice that I can give you is to never accept poor participation as good enough behavior for your team(s). You must always be working towards a “Perfect 10” in everything your value team(s) do!

I call this -- new pay for new work -- or incentives for your value team(s), or why else would they give 100% effort to an endeavor that won’t ever affect their paychecks. Incentives (money, recognition and rewards) can change any team member’s behavior from a negative experience to a positive experience. All you need to do is ask your team members what they would like their incentive program to look like, and then get your senior management to approve the incentive program. You will then be on a new path to superior performance with your value team(s).

The “Perfect 10” value team(s) performance isn’t as impossible as you might now believe, if you have the right team size, diversity, participation and incentives that will propel your value team(s) to the next level of team performance.

For Immediate Release

Contact: R.W. Yokl - 800-220-4271

New Value Analysis Leader Resource Web Gives all the Wherewithal Value Analysis Leaders Have Been Looking for, But Can Never Find!

Think of the “Value Analysis Leader Resource Web” as a giant safe that’s loaded with millions of dollars of savings ideas, tools, and educational resources. Value analysis leaders, their team(s) or committee(s) members simply access our website where they will discover the right clicks on the dial…and presto…the safe opens and all of the supply savings are now theirs.

Skippack, PA March 26, 2008 – Robert T. Yokl, President of Strategic Value Analysis® In Healthcare (SVAH), announced today a new on-line resource for savings ideas, tools, and education called the “Value Analysis Leader Resource Web”. This resource gives all the wherewithal value analysis leaders, their teams and committees have been looking for, in one easy to access on-line resource.

Yokl says, “Think of the “Value Analysis Leader Resource Web” as a giant safe that’s loaded with millions of dollars of savings ideas, tools, and educational resources. Value analysis leaders, team(s) or committee(s) members simply access our website and they will discover the right clicks on the dial…and presto…the safe opens and all of the supply savings are now theirs. That’s what the Value Analysis Leader Resource Web can do for any hospital, system or IDN.”

It’s SVAH’s goal, with every monthly update of Value Analysis Leader Resource Web, to be very aggressive in helping our subscribers find all of the savings that could and should be theirs and not left on the table untouched. With these new money-savings ideas, tools and educational resources that SVAH will give its subscribers every month, it will be as easy as saying 1…2…3. SVAH guarantees that subscribers will be able to instantly transform these ideas into gigantic implementable savings for their healthcare organizations.

“The Value Analysis Leader Resource Web will be offered by SVAH as an annual subscription service”, Yokl states, “but more importantly, we will be updating this resource monthly with new, fresh, not to be found elsewhere, savings ideas”. All interested parties are welcome to visit SVAH’s website at www.strategicva.com/va/ to obtain more information on this offering.

About The Company: Strategic Value Analysis® In Healthcare, (SVAH) Skippack, Pennsylvania, is a software, training and consulting firm specializing in supply chain performance management. SVAH’s mission is to give our clients greater control over their supply chain by providing them with better information, better focus, and better systems so they can make better decisions on their second biggest expenditure.

For More Information Contact:

Robert W. Yokl

Vice President

Strategic Value Analysis® In Healthcare

800-220-4271

ryokl@strategicva.com

www.SavingsBeyondPrice.com

3-Days to Achieve the Highest Level of Supply Savings and Value Analysis Leadership and Performance!