From the July 2015 issue of HealthCare Business News magazine
3. Prepare for a Merger or Acquisition
Most analysts agree that the brisk pace of merger and acquisition activity will continue. That means a significant percentage of you reading this article will likely see your health system acquire or be acquired over the next 12 to 18 months. Integrating procurement systems after a merger or acquisition is complex and time consuming. New content management systems can sit on top of multiple ERP systems, meaning that your compliance rates don’t have to suffer while you wait months for the integration to get sorted out – and you won’t miss out on negotiated discounts and rebates in the meantime.
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4. Mitigate Risk
In health care, tolerances for error are extremely low. If your procurement system has limited search capabilities, it can lead to incorrect purchases or delays. With the technology that’s available today, it’s unacceptable for those errors to occur at the hand of your procurement system. You need to ensure that users can find and purchase the right product for the right application. Look for e-procurement programs that present requestors with pictures and detailed descriptions of products, giving them the information they need to feel confident in their purchase request.
5. Increase Productivity
With enhanced search capabilities in your procurement system, your requestors will spend less time looking for and requesting the product they want to order. That means they’ll have more time to focus on their primary job responsibilities – whether that’s clinical staff delivering quality patient care or non-clinical staff keeping your system running smoothly. Enhancing and simplifying the purchasing experience can also help contribute to improved job satisfaction.
6. Control the Supply Chain
Modern content management systems will help improve the quality of your data over time, bringing real-time transparency and cost control to purchasing activity across the enterprise supply chain. As your real-time visibility of what’s being purchased improves, you will not only improve your contract compliance rates, you will also put yourself in a better position of leverage to negotiate future contracts that are more advantageous to your health system. When it comes to containing the high cost of supplies, you can spend time squeezing dollars out of each and every contract, or you can get serious about successfully implementing those contracts to effectively capture the negotiated savings. If you chose the latter, you won’t regret it.
About the Author: Michael DeLuca is executive vice president of technology and client services for Prodigo Solutions, a health care supply chain solutions company helping hospitals gain control of supply chain spend through contract compliance and automation.
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