The shift to value-based healthcare is gaining momentum. From at-risk deals between payers and pharmaceutical manufacturers where payments are lower if therapies aren’t successful, to the recent HHS announcement that 30 percent of Medicare payments are now in models tying reimbursement to quality, proof of value and quality means more to healthcare providers and their partners than ever before.
Hospitals have thousands of relatively simple, commoditized needs like thermometers, patient amenity kits and pulse oximeters to name just a
few. These have to come from somewhere. But are they worth markups of 30-60 percent that are being used to cover someone else’s marketing, promotions, and sales expense – functions that provide minimal value to the provision of quality care?
“It is amazing how expensive it is to get relatively low-cost products to the right places in healthcare,” VP of Supply Chain Operations for Westchester Medical Center Health Network and ASP Global client Jim Connor says. “Everyone will help you get the product you want. But hardly anyone will tell you what it costs to acquire throughout its supply chain lifecycle. I need partners for items I’m acquiring in high volume that must be consistently of very high quality, with full cost transparency especially in the ‘med/surg’ area.”
A growing number of visionary hospital CFOs, supply chain and purchasing program managers like Jim have eliminated those layers of hidden product expenses that add little to no value to their organization or their patients. They have discovered that sourcing products directly from the factories that make them is not only possible, it often generates improvements in clinical quality and utility, reduces risk and reduces cost at the same time. It is literally a value-based healthcare trifecta.
“Ultimately my goal is to get the product the clinicians want and get it to them efficiently,” Connor says. “I need a partner that can globally source products in a way that doesn’t change my quality and or improves our quality. That is where ASP Global excels. They generated a better product at half the price.”
How much value does your distributor of common consumables and commodities add to your hospital? If it’s little more than an order sheet, acceptable fill rates and an invoice, it’s not enough. To make your hospital supply chain and purchasing program a value-driven enterprise for the value-based world of healthcare, let us bring you the world of global sourcing.
Contact ASP Global CEO Lorne Tritt
Or call (404) 696-6999.
