One of the biggest challenges that any Healthcare Supply Chain or Value Analysis Professional faces in the upcoming world of cost and quality optimization is going to be the believability factor. Having been in the Clinical Supply Utilization/Consumption and Value Analysis world for so long, I want to highlight the believability factors for you so that they won’t cause bottlenecks or halt your efforts altogether. There is nothing worse than finding viable savings and/or quality improvement opportunities only to be shut down by disbelief lip service from customers and key stakeholders.
Bottlenecks and stopping major and minor savings opportunities are regular occurrences when we try to make any change, upgrade/downgrade, or alike to the products, services, and technologies that our customers and stakeholders use on a regular basis. Even seasoned Value Analysis and Supply Chain Professionals come up against these and given the tighter margins at health systems we are going to have to overcome these believability issues more often.
Why do we need to break through the believability factors? Because we can’t let those $330K or $647K savings opportunities go at a health system just because the end users, technical customers, and stakeholders feel that they cannot even consider a lower cost alternative to the feature-rich product they have been using for years. Value Analysis and cost optimization is all about the search for lower cost alternatives that meet users’ functional requirements exactly with equal or better quality/reliability. If the end customers don’t want to consider alternatives because they believe that they already have the optimal product in use, then they aren’t allowing Value Analysis to do their jobs. Keep in mind that the $330K or $647K that I outlined above will then continue to hurt the organization’s bottom-line year after year to the tune of almost $1 million annually.
We can no longer let any savings or quality improvement go that are vitally important to our health system’s bottom line. These simple steps will help you navigate the believability factors that are thrown up often at your Value Analysis Team meetings.
1. Don’t Get Thrown Off Your Game – Those department heads and managers who are going to offer up the believability factors to stop your savings or quality initiative in its tracks are trying to throw you off your game. Example: When one hospital in your system is using three times as much orthopedic bone cement than two other similar hospitals, but your end customers try to throw up a smoke screen of unbelievability as to why they are unique. Trust but verify folks!
2. Intimidation Factors – Most Value Analysis and Supply Chain Professionals, even those with clinical backgrounds, are not subject matter experts and are thus subject to the believability factors that can be a bit intimidating. Physicians and other clinicians will try to throw clinical aspects at you that of course you will not have an answer for. Just remember, you are a facilitator of a process and when they don’t believe the issue you have brought to light because of this clinical aspect or that, you can go and verify whether that is in fact the case or not. Don’t just let them give you lip service and run away with your tail between your legs.
3. Time is Not Your Friend – There is a strategy to create roadblocks and excuses for not wanting to change anything in order to delay or string out your value analysis initiative in the hopes that you will drop it altogether and move on to something else. Let them bring up as many doubts as possible but stay on point and finish the cost optimization initiative.
4. Don’t Forget to Leverage Your Data Points – You should always anticipate that there will be some thoughts of unbelievability going on with any initiative because your end users are not interested in changing what they are doing. In a perfect world, they would take your evidence, benchmarks or fancy reports that point to the savings and embrace it, but they don’t. Their natural reaction is to keep things at a constant and not rock the boat in their departments but that is not how cost optimization works. Remember, you have many facets to work with which are great leverage points and if you get two or three or even four of these indicating a savings or quality opportunity then that is golden. We do this all the time with cohort, year over year, and system level benchmarks that triangulate the validity of the initiative.
Let the Believability Factor Work in Your Favor
I am a firm believer in letting the believability factor play out in any and all cost or quality optimization initiatives because it is valuable feedback that will let you flush out valuable savings and quality improvement on an ongoing basis. The believability factor can be at first looked at as a difficult challenge but if you recognize it and embrace that it is just part of the process then you can gain even more savings than you ever imagined with less pushbacks and more buy in.
Below are some similar articles that you may find interesting.
Finding Healthcare Supply Chain Savings that You Had No Idea Were There
4 Simple Strategies to Flipping the Switch to Cost Management with Your Value Analysis Program
The Critical Success Factors of Healthcare Supply and Purchased Service Cost Optimization