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September 25, 2001

HOW DO YOU FIND TIME FOR VALUE ANALYSIS? 

One of the top five concerns of healthcare material managers, based on HCP’s polls, is that their value analysis committee(s) or team(s) are taking too much of their time. You tell us that you are already understaffed, overworked and stressed out with your day-to-day responsibilities, so how do you find time for value analysis?  Maybe the question should be reframed as, “how can I utilize my value analysis committee(s) or team(s) to save time for me and my staff”?  Let’s look at the facts, as opposed to our current perception of the facts:

FACT #1: Value analysis is a shared responsibility not a one or two person show. 

Most value analysis committee(s) or team(s) are chaired or lead by, organized by, and the full burden of the workload of the committee(s) or team(s) falls on the material management department.  When in reality the best practice in value analysis is to share all of the responsibility of the VA committee or team with its members.  It all begins with delegation of the full workload of the committee or team by the chairperson or team leader to their committee or team members.  This strategy alone will reduce your value analysis related workload by 90%.

FACT #2: Value analysis committees or teams need to be a direct extension of your material management operations, not just a communication vehicle or advisory board.

Too many value analysis committees and teams are utilized by Material Managers(MMs) as communication vehicles and advisory boards to inform them of new GPO offerings and other initiatives and asked for their advice and council. This is a passive role. The ideal or active role for these VA committees and teams requires you to link them directly to your material management operations.  This can be accomplished by delegating to your VA committee(s) or team(s) complete responsibility for all:

-                      Value justifications of GPO offerings

-                      Value justifications of new product, service and technology introductions

-                      Coordination of all savings and cost reduction initiatives

-                      Investigations of product, service or technology failures 

This delegation and linkage of your MM operations to your VA committees or teams will effectively reduce your workload 10-fold and improved the quality of your operations at the same time..

FACT #3:  Value analysis will give you more time for sourcing and logistical operations, which is the top priority of Materials Management.

By employing new VA committee and team strategies and tactics effectively, you will have more time for sourcing new vendors to meet your hospital or systems functional requirements at the lowest possible cost.  This is how you can really add value-to-value analysis.