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the 7 Most Dangerous Myths About Price Savings in Healthcare
By on November 08, 2011  |  Comments 0

The 7 Most Dangerous Myths About Healthcare Supply Chain Price Savings

GET YOUR FREE GUIDE TODAY! We too believed, for many years, the dangerous myth that price savings would be here forevermore, then we realized that the “law of diminishing returns” (a point in time when the return on your efforts drop off dramatically and precipitously) would kick in when the healthcare marketplace matured. Well, that’s [...]

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How to Save 10%, 20% or Even 30% on Your Supply Chain Expenses
By on October 13, 2011  |  Comments 0

How to Save 10%, 20% or Even 30% on Your Supply Chain Expenses

As I see it, supply chain managers will be called on to save more than their usual 3% to 5% on their supply chain expenses each and every year. This will become a reality due to the drastic reductions, over the next few years, in your hospital’s Medicare and Medicare reimbursement. Here’s a game plan [...]

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Utilization Management: If Not Now, When?
By on September 20, 2011  |  Comments 0

Utilization Management: If Not Now, When?

I can’t tell you how many times I hear from supply chain professionals who have utilization management on their radar screen, but they have other initiatives they are working on (e.g. new MMIS installation, data cleansing initiative, regional GPO formation, etc.) that are taking precedence.  Then six months or a year goes by and these [...]

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The Power of Value Analysis Analytics
By on July 19, 2011  |  Comments 0

The Power of Value Analysis Analytics

There is a lot of confusion over the terms benchmarks vs. value analysis analytics. I would like to clarify these terms since while benchmarks are important they don’t tell the whole story, while value analysis analytics does. First off, benchmarks are a standard against something that can be measure and assessed. They can be used [...]

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Three “Must Have” Supply Chain Survival Tools
By on June 14, 2011  |  Comments 0

Three “Must Have” Supply Chain Survival Tools

Supply chain management is becoming an even more complex and ever-changing discipline, since it is at the forefront of cost management efforts in any and all healthcare organizations today. If hospitals, systems and IDNs can’t hold the line on their supply expenses to below the annual inflation rate, for any given year, they won’t be [...]

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Breakthrough Game Changing Book is Yours for FREE!
By on May 04, 2011  |  Comments 0

Breakthrough Game Changing Book is Yours for FREE!

Healthcare Supply Utilization Revolution Become a Savings Magnet Read this book and in a few weeks save more money than you have in years. Sounds unbelievable? Robert T. Yokl and Robert W. Yokl, healthcare’s leading authorities in Supply Utilization Management, have helped hundreds of hospitals, healthcare systems and integrated delivery networks to saved close to [...]

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  • Featured Video
Ignoring a Customer in your Hospital’s Value Analysis Process can and will Destroy your Credibility

Ignoring a Customer in your Hospital’s Value Analysis Process can and will Destroy your Credibility

When we teach our clients’ value analysis team members in our LEAN Value Analysis Program about the “Hierarchy of Customers” (internal and external) we start out by focusing on the obvious customer who is anyone who touches the product, service or technologies through its life cycle. However, we also talk about the importance of identifying [...]

Supply Chain Project Cycle Time:  A Key Indicator of Performance

Supply Chain Project Cycle Time: A Key Indicator of Performance

One of the key performance indicators that should be monitored with any and all supply chain initiatives is the importance of “project cycle time” or the total time from the beginning to the end of your project.  To avoid excess “project cycle time” here are three things you can do to execute your supply chain [...]

Closing the Loop: Strategic Value Analysis Plan

Closing the Loop: Strategic Value Analysis Plan

I just talked to a vice president of supply chain for a large healthcare system who is looking for the correct path he should take to reinvent his system-wide value analysis program since he isn’t happy with his existing model. He told me that he was thinking about hiring a value analysis director, but isn’t [...]

Extreme Makeover: Demystifying Supply Utilization Management

Extreme Makeover: Demystifying Supply Utilization Management

We have been hearing and reading about numerous supply chain professionals talking about how they are focusing on supply utilization management at their healthcare organization, but in most cases what they are really talking about is reigning in their price, standardization and non-compliance on their products, services and technologies. Just like the “extreme makeover” television [...]

Are You Reporting Your Supply Chain Successes to Your Boss?

Are You Reporting Your Supply Chain Successes to Your Boss?

One interesting fact about supply chain management is that most supply chain managers, I have discovered, uniformly don’t employ  monthly and annual supply chain management reports to their bosses. These reports should be designed to inform their bosses of the successes that they are achieving in their departments. Most supply chain professionals just assume that [...]

Supplier Relationship Management: Is this really an emerging best practice?

Supplier Relationship Management: Is this really an emerging best practice?

We don’t hear a lot of supply chain professionals talking about “supplier relationship management” as an emerging best practice in healthcare, but it is a best practice in every other industry. So, what’s up with that? Newsflash: Industry has found early on that price is only one component of the “best value” equation with their [...]

How do you Execute “Takeaways” in Value Analysis?

How do you Execute “Takeaways” in Value Analysis?

There seems to be a tendency in hospitals, systems and IDNs supply chain management to provide their customers with feature rich products, services and technologies. When it becomes evident however that your customer’s don’t need everything they want and desire it’s almost impossible to take these features away from them. In fact, your customers will [...]

Hospital Supplier Pay-for-Performance Model

Hospital Supplier Pay-for-Performance Model

I’m hearing more discussions on Supplier Pay-for-Performance models, to help hospitals achieve defined, measurable cost effective patient care outcomes now that more hospitals are joining (or considering joining) Accountable Care Organizations. If you aren’t already aware of it, Accountable Care Organizations (ACO) are structured to provide their patients, at a fixed fee, their total episode [...]

Does Your Hospital’s Culture Matter in Cost Management?

Does Your Hospital’s Culture Matter in Cost Management?

Something that you might not realize if you have only worked at one, two or three hospitals, systems or IDNs in your supply chain career: All hospitals, systems or IDNs have a different culture or shared beliefs, values, customs, practices and social behavior that guide their actions.    Having worked with more than 496 hospitals, [...]

Building your Hospital’s Supply Chain Infrastructure to Save Big in 2012

Building your Hospital’s Supply Chain Infrastructure to Save Big in 2012

As you know, it takes a solid foundation to build a strong and lasting building or structure like the Taj Mahal in India, Eiffel Tower in Paris or the Chrysler building in New York.  What you might not be aware of is that it takes the same unique architecture, perseverance and creativity when you are [...]