This is just churning the same old savings, over and over again, without having any real effect on your hospital’s bottom line, since inflation (3.4% annually) has been eating into all of your so-called savings for years. The future of supply chain expense management isn’t in the old ways of doing things, but instead is all about utilization management.

This is where you will achieve double-digit savings (26% on average) on just about any utilization project that you decide to attack. More importantly, it will require less time than any of the above strategies, tactics and techniques, I just mentioned, to reduce your supply expenses!

So if you aren’t on the utilization management train already, may I suggest that you start thinking beyond price by digging deeper and broader in your supply chain to identify and remove the wasteful and inefficient consumption, misuse, misapplication and mismatches in your value streams.

Then, and only then, will you save more in less time which will be sustainable over the long-term. 

Your Partner In Innovative Savings,

Bob Yokl

Robert T Yokl

Chief Value Strategist

Strategic Value Analysis® In Healthcare

P.S. Would it be worth .82 cents to have ALL of the resources you required to be wildly successful with your hospital or system’s supply value analysis program?  Well this isn’t a fantasy, but a reality with our innovative Value Analysis Resource Web. Check it out for yourself at www.strategicva.com/vaweb.htm. i PROMISE You — YOU won’t be disappointed!

P.P.S. Don’t forget to check out my new blog article “Stop the Madness with Your GPO Contracts”. This will give you some ideas on how to manage this important chore more effectively.   

Yet, throughout my travels I rarely see it used at healthcare organizations for the planning, organizing and managing of their value analysis projects. This is a missed opportunity because this tactic will enable you to set time-lines on your projects, keep things moving on your projects, monitor and control your projects, get the most out of your limited resources and enable you to manage multiple projects with ease.

Save the easy way!  At one time we too didn’t use project management techniques to manage our client’s value analysis projects only to find that our client’s team members were going every which way – but forward. That’s when we realized we had to do something different to control these unruly herds.  We found that by providing a practical, easy-to-use project management system for planning, organization and managing our client’s projects we could tame the herd, speed up projects and perform 10x more value analysis studies than ever before.  That’s what successful management can do for you.  

So who needs project management? I would say everyone who wants a systematic approach to staying on top of all of your value analysis multiple projects at once and doesn’t want to leave anything to chance, happenstance or fate!  Doesn’t that sound like you?

Your Partner In Innovative Savings,

Bob Yokl

Robert T Yokl

Chief Value Strategist

Strategic Value Analysis® In Healthcare

P.S. Almost Everyone who has seen a demo of our Utilizer™ Dashboard has told us that it  is just what they have been looking for to manage and control their utilization misalignments! Isn’t it time you sign up for a demo too?

P.P.S. Don’t forget to check out my new blog article “Grow, Lead and Succeed with One Big Idea”, that will give you one big tactic that you can’t afford to miss to improve your communications with your bosses.  

I also had lunch with a few MMs and value analysis managers at the conference who wanted to know how they could uncover the big and robust utilization savings that I talked about in my presentation.  This is when I realized that supply chain professionals aren’t building their toolkits with the precise tools to prepare them for the future of supply chain expense management, i.e. utilization management.

This is because the old tools that healthcare organizations have been employing (MMIS, ERP, and spend managers) for years won’t get this new work accomplished. That’s why we now need to embrace the new art and science of value analytics to search out our utilization misalignments and eliminate them. By doing so supply chain professionals can save 3%, 7% or even 12% in our supply expenses – beyond price.

If you would like to know more about this new and emerging discipline I would suggest that you download my new special report “Utilization Management: The Future of Supply Expense Management” that will show you what you need to do to build your toolkit to meet this challenges in the 21^st century. 

Your Partner In Innovative Savings,

Bob Yokl

Robert T Yokl

Chief Value Strategist

Strategic Value Analysis® In Healthcare

P.S. This is the last call (deadline May 31^st) for applicants for our Certified Value Analysis Leadership Training program at our early bird rate of $1,192 ($211 discount).  If you have been thinking about applying to this one of a kind program this is the time to do it. Otherwise, you will miss this discount period! Learn More

P.P.S. Don’t forget to check out my new blog article “Are You Really Practicing Value Analysis or Doing Something Else” (Revisited). This is where I talk about how I have found that value analysis coordinators, managers and directors aren’t practicing value analysis either. – to their disadvantage! Read Here

By Robert T. Yokl, Chief Value Strategist

I received an e-mail last week from a operating room director who had a real problem with an article I wrote for HPN magazine in April, 2008 titled “Zero Waste Must be Your Goal: Supply chain managers can make a huge impact by eliminating waste in 8 areas”. She thought my recommendations to reduce waste to zero wouldn’t work in her operating room.

Specifically this writer had a big problem with my suggesting that all hospitals should embrace the philosophy of just-in-time inventories, since she felt she needed to carry many critical items that didn’t move for years. She believed that a hospital OR wasn’t like an automobile factory that had much more control over their environment.

What I told this OR director, by return e-mail, was that she was right that all my suggestions wouldn’t work in her operating room, but that when I write an article I must write it with a broad and diverse audience in mind.  So I need, therefore, to be somewhat generic vs. specific with many of my ideas.

But I did tell her that I thought that many of my ideas would work, such as, cutting down on her waiting time for information, supplies signatures or people, not overproducing linen packs, instrument packs, kits and trays, cut down on transportation time of her materials and patients and reducing extra motion in all areas of her operations. 

So I wouldn’t take everything I write or say as gospel, however I would look for those gems that will make your job more productive, efficient and a whole lot easier. I consider it my job to find new ways to help you do even things better than good.

P.S. If you would like more powerful savings ideas like this one I would recommend that you sign-up for our “no cost” weekly Savings Beyond Price™ e-Newsletter at www.Strategicva.com. You will also get a copy of my e-book “Your Target Blueprint for Supply Chain Management Success”, as a bonus.

I just read an article in HPN magazine recommending one singular approach to what I call Value Analysis 2.0 (beyond price and standardization) that the author suggested would fit all size hospitals. I beg to differ with the author on this point, but let me tell you first what I liked about the article.

I was happy to see the author agrees with me that big price and standardization savings are now dead, and that hospitals now need to focus on savings beyond price (i.e. utilization) to keep their savings machine humming. I also agree that a fresh approach to value analysis in now called for if healthcare organizations want to move to the next level of savings performance. And that any and all supplies and purchase services should be included in the scope of value analysis teams’ charters so that no supply related cost is exempt from value justification.

I couldn’t agree more with the author that without a total and unwavering commitment from the c-suite no real change can or will happen beyond what you are doing now. And that material management should be the data guru’s for your value analysis teams, thus pointing the way to new savings opportunities, so your value teams aren’t burdened with this complex, time consuming and arduous task.

Where I differ with the author are on two points.  First, that all hospitals should be establishing product-line value analysis teams and secondly that value team members shouldn’t need to do any of the teamwork because they are too busy.   

On the first point, it’s my strong opinion, that small hospitals, which represent 80% of all hospitals in the country, don’t need elaborate product-line value analysis teams because they don’t buy enough products, services and technologies to warrant the time investment to do so.  Second, no one should ever be too busy to save money or not ready to roll up their sleeves to find it. Just listening to presentations from material management, then making decisions as a committee isn’t value analysis at all. This is Value Analysis 1.0, which we are trying to move beyond.

In the final analysis, I thought the author did a great job of explaining what she saw as the future of value analysis in healthcare. Nevertheless, I think we all need to remember that “one size” of anything doesn’t fit all situations. We need to customize what we are trying to accomplished based on the size, culture and complexity of our healthcare organization. Then we will get the exact fit for our healthcare organization.

P.S. If you would like more powerful savings ideas like this one I would recommend that you sign-up for our “no cost” weekly Savings Beyond Price™ e-Newsletter at www.Strategicva.com. You will also get a copy of my e-book “Your Target Blueprint for Supply Chain Management Success”, as a bonus.

• Added Many More Value Analysis, Utilization and Supply Savings Case Studies
• More Focused Training on Utilization Management and Benchmarking for Value Analysis Professionals
• Focus the Training to Be More Hands on with Real Time Actionable Results
• Share with you the Latest Strategies, Tools and Methods to Save More in Less Time with Less Effort
• Further Enhanced our Value Analysis Leader Web Software (included in the workshop)
  • New Utilization Benchmarking Section
  • More Savings Ideas to the Savings Idea and Best Practice Database
  • More Members Only Webinars

What’s value analysis all about?  It’s about commitment, discipline and focus and finding lower cost alternatives to what you are doing now!  If you are missing even one of these success components you can’t and won’t have consistent, sustainable and substantial savings results.

VA is all about having your senior management commit to making savings happen for your supply value analysis program or it will slowly, but surely sputter, fizzle and die.

VA is all about having discipline (practices and methods to enforce acceptable behavior) from the top, right down to your value team level or you will be going every which way — but forward.

Value analysis is NOT about GPOs, capitation, standardization or custom contracts, but is all about utilization management: wasteful and inefficient consumption, misuse, misapplication and mismatches. If you are focusing all or most of your efforts on the price side of the supply equation, you are missing 79% of your hidden savings opportunities.

To bring these points home here’s is an example: we once were retained by a hospital CEO who intuitively understood that saving money was ALL about commitment, discipline and focusing on finding lower cost alternatives to what his hospital was doing.  With our help, he organized, and operationalized his hospital’s multi-phased savings initiative.  He then became the chief cheer leader for his management team and hospital staff, encouraging his staff at every opportunity to dig deeper and broader then ever before to search out and find those hidden savings. Well, as you could have guessed, within a year his hospital saved over $6.5 million.

There is no magic to this success formula; just the commitment, discipline and focus to make savings happen the old fashion way: Hard Work!   

Your Partner In Innovative Savings,

Bob Yokl

Robert T Yokl

Chief Value Strategist

Strategic Value Analysis® In Healthcare

P.S. If you are looking to establish, enhance, re-energize and dramatically improve your value analysis program (or you have hit the wall on savings) then our Certified Value Analysis Leader Program to be held on June 24-26 is the ticket for you. And, as a bonus, you will receive a one-year subscription to our new Value Analysis Resource Web at “no cost” to you. Note: Only 25 days left to save on our early bird rate of $1,192.00! click here to learn more

P.P.S. Hove you checked-out our new and improved Savings Beyond Price™ blog where I talk this week about the “Supply Chain Hall of Fame Honors Nine Superstars”.? Can you guess who the honorees are?  If not, I have listed them for your review. and I hope some comments.  Visit the Blog Here

This is a first in healthcare where nine superstars are honored by the Bellwether League www.bellwetherleague.org for their groundbreaking work in professionalizing the healthcare supply chain management discipline: Dean Ammer, Lee Boergadine, Gene Burton, Charles Housley, Thomas Kelly, William McFaul, Tome Pirellie, Donald Siegle and Alex Vallas.

I have had the good fortune to be able to follow the careers of most of these honorees and to apply their enlightened philosophies, teachings and models in my own supply chain work. From my prospective, all of these individuals are or were important trailblazers when our industry desperately needed the leadership over the last 30-years. 

One honoree in particular I would like to talk about is Charles Housley, since I do know him personally, once contributed a chapter to one of his books, have had him conduct a seminar for my supply chain staff in the 80s and have talked to him as recently as last year. Chuck has had a profound influence on my thinking about our profession when I was a young material manager.  His teachings started me thinking about systematizing what I was doing as opposed to grappling with the same old problems over and over again. Chuck gave me and my colleagues the big picture of what materials management was all about when everyone was trying to understand it. He gave us the “how to’s” on just-in-time inventories, stockless distribution, exchange carts, and product formularies strategies that worked in the real world of materials management. I am happy that I have had the opportunity to thank Chuck personally for his contribution to my own career. I’m elated that Chuck is now being nationally recognized by the Bellwether League for the pioneering influence he has had on the growth of our discipline.

That’s not to say that the other nine honorees don’t warrant this adulation, it’s just that I have had an up close and personal relationship with one of the honorees that gives me an insiders perspective of why I support the Bellwether Leagues efforts to honor these nine unsung hero’s of healthcare.

P.S. If you would like more powerful savings ideas like this one I would recommend that you sign-up for our “no cost” weekly Savings Beyond Price™ e-Newsletter at www.Strategicva.com. You will also get a copy of my e-book “Your Target Blueprint for Supply Chain Management Success”, as a bonus.

The truth is no one size fits all products, services and technology purchases.  If you try to standardize on everything you buy you will limit your customers’ choices, and thereby, compel them to use over-specified or under-specified supplies and equipment which don’t meet their exact specifications.  Believe it or not some of the blame for this observable fact can be laid at the feet of your GPO because you are rewarded for over-standardization by the terms of their offerings.

As an illustration, we just completed a 360 Degree Supply Savings Analysis for a client where we found that they had standardized on a $7.10 I.V. set for ALL of their patients. This practice was costing this hospital $54,334 annually in unnecessary and unwanted IV set cost since this was the only IV set that was available for their clinicians to use.

A much better way to decide on what I.V. sets this client should have been buying was for them to develop customized specifications for each of their value groups (segmentation of the customers by their critical to quality requirements) that use this product. With the result, that this client would have ended up with five or six IV sets vs. one only and this would have met each of their value groups’ exact CTQ requirements thus saving $54,334 annually on their IV set purchases.   

The lesson of this story is that this client did have the best price on the IV set they were buying, however their standardization policy was working against them when it came to having the lowest total cost in this commodity group.  Is you standardization policy working against you as well?

er In Savings Beyond Price™

Your Partner In Savings Beyond Price™

Robert T. Yokl

Robert T Yokl

Chief Value Strategist

Strategic Value Analysis® In Healthcare  

P.S.  One of the new power tools that are available to you and your c-suite to give them and you a window into your supply chain operations is our Utilizer™ Dashboard. This new tool will show you and your c-suite members all their supply chain costs in one database along with actionable targets for savings.  Why not make it easier on yourself by having this tool at your disposable to effortlessly cost justify your initiatives vs. fighting your c-suite for every dollar you request to improve your supply chain operations. Check out our “test drive” to see how we do it!  

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