Healthcare Value Analysis Hospital Consulting and Benchmarking for Supply Chain Savings

Robert W. and I just recorded a Podcast last week called “Value Analysis 2.0: New Rules, Systems And Models For Long Lasting Savings Performance”, which introduces a new set of immutable laws for value analysis practitioners for the 21^st century.

Why? Can you think of anything that you were doing related to supply chain management 21 years ago that hasn’t been upgraded, automated, refined, or advanced to the next level of performance? With few exceptions, I think that the answer you would give is NOTHING! Then why are value analysis practitioners still employing the same value analysis model they have been utilizing for 6, 12 or even 21 years?

Isn’t it about time you re-think, re-new and re-invent what you are doing related to value analysis to move your committees or team(s) to the next level of savings performance? By doing so, you will consistently grow your profits, cut cost, improve quality, eliminate all defects, waste and variations in your supply chain. This is what Value Analysis 2.0 is all about, deploying the next generation value analysis model by “wringing the towel dry” on your supply chain savings.

With this said, if you haven’t already listened to this Podcast, I would suggest you click on this link www.strategicvalueanalysis.com/podcast.htm to hear it, if you want to breathe more life into your supply value analysis program today.

Leaning Your Supply Chain With Six Sigma To Improve Your Speed, Quality And Efficiency

I was recently asked to speak at a state material management association later this year on Lean Six Sigma because, as the president of the association told me, “all of his members wanted to know what it is all about”. This got me thinking about how important it is for all supply chain professionals to know what Lean Six Sigma is all about and how it can dramatically improve the SPEED, QUALITY AND EFFICIENCY of your supply chain processes. So here’s a “Quick Tour” of the concept to get you thinking about how it can benefit you.

Most of us have heard about SIX SIGMA from the successes that it has had at companies like Motorola, GE, ITT, Caterpillar, Lockheed Martin, etc. In fact, twenty years after its inception Six Sigma has saved an estimated $427 Billion for Fortune 500 companies. It has also been employed in about 5% of the hospitals in the United States with parallel results. It focuses is on measurement, variation and defects. THEREFORE, SIX SIGMA IS ALL ABOUT PROCESS IMPROVEMENT!

Now LEAN had its roots at Toyota in the 1940s and 1950s where it couldn’t afford to invest in new equipment or large inventories. So forward-thinking assembly line managers developed lean production processes (rapid change over, Kaizen, Muda, Five Ss, etc.) to remove non-value added work. THEREFORE, LEAN IS ALL ABOUT REMOVING WASTE AND INEFFICENCY FROM THE VALUE CHAIN!

About ten years ago the techniques of LEAN and SIX SIGMA were combined by companies like Lockheed Martin into what we now know as LEAN SIX SIGMA, which enabled organizations (profit and non-profit) to focus on improving quality, speed and lowering cost at the same time.

The benefits of LEAN SIX SIGMA is that it will give you a disciplined approach to (i) cutting cost, (ii) improving delivery time, (iii) reducing inventory, (iv) and increasing customer satisfaction in your supply chain processes.

In other words, it will allow you to quickly identify all of the waste and inefficiency in your supply chain processes and root them out. This will then permit you to do more with less inventory, less resources and less hassles.

Since most healthcare organizations have cut their supply chain staffing to the absolute minimum, I see the adoption of the principles and practices of LEAN SIX SIGMA by supply chain professionals as being a requirement, not an option, if you want to survive and thrive in the 21^st century.

For Immediate Release

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

One of the Most Important Supply Chain Tools to Be Introduced In the Past 25 Years According to a Leading Supply Chain Expert

Most healthcare organizations don’t have a utilization benchmarking tool to pinpoint, with certainty, where all their utilization savings reside, therefore are missing an extremely important power tool in their toolbox that can save them 3%, 6% or even 9% in their supply chain expenses. The good news! With SVAH’s new UTILIZER™ Utilization Management Dashboard, healthcare organizations will have the exact tool that they have been searching for to quickly and easily uncover all of their utilization misalignments.

Skippack, PA June 29, 2007 - We all know that a hammer is used to strike nails, a drill is use to make holes and a screw driver is use to turn screws. We call this using the precise tool for the right job to get the best results! Then why do healthcare organizations continue to use the wrong benchmarking tool to uncover their utilization savings? The answer is that we don’t always know there is a better tool to get the job done right the first time!

Robert T. Yokl, President of Strategic Value Analysis® In Healthcare (SVAH), an acknowledged expert in supply chain management, recalls talking to a healthcare supply chain manager a few months ago who told him that he was working with three databases (a spend manager, analytics manager and clinical manager), but still couldn’t uncover his hospital’s utilization misalignments. While SVAH’s own measurements showed however that this hospital had $4.2 million in utilization misalignments that were invisible to this supply chain manager. “This is the quandary that too many healthcare supply chain professionals face today, how to move to the next level of savings performance”.

More importantly Yokl states, “If a healthcare organization doesn’t have a utilization benchmarking tool to pinpoint, with certainty, where all their utilization savings reside, they are missing an extremely important power tool in their toolbox that can save them 3%, 6% or even 9%.”

“When you consider that a hospital, system or IDN can have 18,000 to 48,000 or more products (in 176 categories of purchase) in their MMIS system, where do supply chain professionals get started probing for these hidden savings?”, Yokl asks.

“The good news” Yokl predicts, “is that with SVAH’s new UTILIZER™ Utilization Management Dashboard healthcare organizations will have the exact tool that they have been searching for to quickly and easily uncover all of their utilization misalignments.”

Over the last seven years SVAH has conducted hundreds of utilization benchmarking studies for hospitals, systems and IDNs employing their own proprietary utilization dashboard which has identified close to a half a billion dollars in utilization misalignments for SVAH’s clients.

SVAH has now decided, after much internal debate, to make available their proprietary utilization dashboard to the marketplace as a monthly subscription service. This is because they now believe that periodic utilization studies aren’t a timely or effective way to manage a multi-million dollar supply chain business.

“We believe that a much better way, after we have repeatedly observed that our client’s utilization patterns are changing so rapidly (in less than three months in some cases), is to provide our clients with real-time access to mission critical and actionable information.”

This then is the genesis and the reason for SVAH introducing its new UTILIZER™ Utilization Management dashboard which Yokl believes,” Is one of the most important supply chain tools to be introduced in the past 25 years.”

Yokl says, “that the UTILIZER™ Utilization Management Dashboard will be provided as a subscription service on a fixed monthly fee basis (with a 30 day cancellation for any reason) to identify all of our client’s utilization savings.” SVAH will also provide its clients with unlimited phone and e-mail coaching and consulting to assist them in the implementation of the savings that have been identified with the UTILIZER™. SVAH will also provide them with quarterly refreshing of their purchasing data so clients will always be on top of their utilization misalignments. “The best feature of our UTILIZER™. subscription services,” Yokl states, “is that we can have new clients in the drivers seat within 30 days.”

About The Company: Strategic Value Analysis® In Healthcare, (SVAH) Skippack, Pennsylvania, is a software, training and consulting firm specializing in supply chain 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@strategicvalueanalysis.com

www.strategicvalueanalysis.com