I was thinking about a
conversation I had with a new client who really
grilled us on our capabilities and more specifically
on our depth and breathe of our software (price and
utilization) that we will be
employing to help this client save - big time. Whew,
this client really put us through the ringer by
asking all the smart questions and luckily we have
had our software in place for over 6-years now to
meet his
requirements.
More importantly,
this conversation made me think of the strategic
decision we made six years ago to build our own intranet
web based benchmarking software which is now one of our
biggest assets. We now have over 9,123 benchmarks (in
over 151 supply categories), based on over 313 hospitals
and 31 systems’ client assignments.
Why Not Create Your Own? If
consultants can save big money for hospitals, systems
and IDNs every day utilizing benchmarking and pricing
software and databases. Why don't hospital's create
their own databases for this stuff?
I think this fits into the current
mindset that all hospitals, systems and IDNs are looking
for better and more credible price and utilization
benchmarks to
move them to the next level of savings performance.
My point here is that it’s never
too late to start building your own benchmarking system
or outsource this service to a third party, so you can
be on top of your cost drivers and know with certainty
where there is
money to be saved in your supply chain.
The alternative is to continue to
fly blind without a clear cut and concise navigation
system and hope no major crisis sneaks up on you in the
mean time (see my article below about this).
Your Partner in Supply Chain Savings,
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