Hospital supply chain professionals (SCP) are always looking for ways to cut costs and increase their hospital’s bottom line. Today, every penny counts, not just dollars that are inefficiently and wastefully spent.
The next evolution in supply chain management (SCM) will go beyond price and standardization to cutting costs and adding value at every link of a hospital’s supply chain. It will no longer be only about price savings!
Change How Your Hospital Sees Supply Chain Management
A study by Deloitte predicts that the (supply chain) in the next decade “will alter existing assumptions…It will require additional skills, knowledge, and tools to address entirely new challenges while solving current ones more creatively. And it will likely change the very core of how (your hospital) looks at supply chain as an organizational function and an overall hospital competence.”
A new day is dawning for SCPs where data will be king and value analysis will evolve into a waste elimination machine. There will be deeper collaboration with your suppliers who will assume more risk and provide more training and support. You will buy products with smaller footprints, less non-essential features and aesthetics, and that provide more value for your hospital’s coveted dollar. Furthermore, SCPs will be more focused on their products’ and services’ life cycle costs than ever before. This is where your sustainable savings will be generated in the next decade.
Anticipate What Is Changing
Most important, anticipate what is changing and stay ahead of the wave! Every hospital needs to save more money and become more efficient just to stay afloat in these turbulent times. Therefore, you need to devise a strategic supply chain management plan (revised annually) that dovetails with your hospital’s quality, safety, and outcome goals each year. For instance, if your hospital needs to shave 12% from their operating expenses you then will need to investigate new ways to reduce your supply expenses to contribute to this financial goal. The best way is to benchmark everything you are doing to ensure that you are an industry best-in-class performer in each of your supply chain functions. Trust us when we tell you that no one we have audited in 34 years of business has been best-in-class in everything they do!
Hospital Supply Chain of the Future
The supply chain of the future will be quite different from today. For your supply chain department to survive and thrive in the new healthcare economy, you will need to transform what you have been doing by anticipating what is changing: Time, money, and resources. If handled well, you can expect much more smooth sailing than just letting the wind take you where you probably don’t want to go.
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