We are all searching for the best practices (benchmarks) in value analysis in order to obtain greater savings yields and quality gains, but where and how can we find them? To speed up your search I am offering you the 10 BEST STRATEGIC VALUE ANALYSIS™ BEST PRACTICES that we have observed or initiated at healthcare organizations throughout the U.S. to move your VA program to the next level of savings and quality gains:
1. Team-Based:VA teams are now coming into their own throughout the U.S. because they make more sense than VA committees in getting the job done faster and better by involving customers, stakeholders, and experts who understand their products, services, and technologies much better than committee members collectively can or should.
2. Extensive Training:Value analysis is an art and a science with a 50-year history that requires 40 to 80 hours of classroom and just-in-time training to truly become proficient in this discipline. Healthcare organizations that are investing in training their VA teams are receiving a minimum of 100:1 ROI for their efforts.
3. Standardized Process:Too many hospitals are “winging it” when it comes to value analysis; whereas, best practice hospitals and health systems have a defined value methodology that their VA team members follow religiously on each and every study they perform. By adding this disciple to their VA program, best-practice hospitals and health systems are realizing greater savings and quality gains.
4. Function Oriented:Value analysis is the study of function and the search for alternatives, not price.Value analysis goes beyond price to identify the true requirements of your customers and meet those requirements at the lowest possible cost. Best-practice hospitals that understand this important differentiation are saving 30% to 50% on each commodity group they study.
5. Customer Focused:Value analysis begins and ends with the customer at best-practice hospitals. However, spelling out exactly which products, services, and technologies will meet customers’ exact requirements is the real challenge. This challenge is being met through VA Customer Mapping™ to help truly understand customers’ exact requirements and then position customers for the change(s) being proposed to them with your value justifications.
6. Clinician Ownership:The #1 challenge for Value Practitioners in healthcare today is obtaining buy-in from clinicians on product, service, and technology changes. Yet, best-practice hospitals have solved this challenge by having their clinicians customize the products, services, and technologies they are purchasing, as opposed to standardizing on products, services, and technologies they won’t accept or buy into.
7. Strategic Planning:Most value analysis programs focus their efforts on GPO contract and requisition driven offerings, whereas, best-practice hospitals strategically plan their value analysis candidates and target their savings. Results show that strategic planning driven VA programs save 10 to 15 times more than GPO and requisition driven VA programs.
8. Outcome-Based Results:Best-practice hospitals and health systems track VA savings and quality gains through agreed upon metrics and milestones with their executive management to enforce discipline and ensure outcome-based goals are met and/or exceeded.
9. Decision Support:Real time data, in an organized, structured, and cleansed format, is provided by best practice hospitals or systems for their VA team members use to data mine for the gold nuggets that surface with data-driven VA studies.
10.Knowledge Management:Best-practice hospitals capture all VA studies’ documentation in a centralized database to be shared with all internal and external collaboration partners, as opposed to reinventing the wheel year after year.
These 10 best practices in Strategic Value Analysis™ represent the forefront of system thinking on value analysis in the United States today. If you or your colleagues have additional best practices that you would like to share, please email me at [email protected] and we will publish them on our website to add to our community of knowledge on the important discipline.