I don’t know about your hospital, system, or IDN, but most of the healthcare supply chain professionals we talk to tell us that their price and standardization savings are drying up! This state of affairs shouldn’t surprise you after decades of your GPO’s efforts to squeeze the last pennies out of your commodity purchases.
The Secret to Staying Ahead in the Hospital Supply Chain Savings Game
This is what happens when you drill a well and then expect it to pump black gold for 50 years or more. Sooner or later, your well will run dry and you need to drill new holes to find more black gold Or, better yet, discover even greater sources of riches to stay ahead of fluctuations in the marketplace. This mindset is also the secret to staying ahead in the hospital supply chain savings game!
This has been the strategy of the late multi-millionaire T. Boone Pickens, who for decades changed his focus, redirected his resources, and realigned his tactics when his wells had reached their peak. Pickens made his fortune as an oil wildcatter forming a company in 1954 called Mesa Petroleum to drill for oil. When he believed that oil had reached its peak in 2001, he invested in windmill farms, on which he unfortunately lost millions since the demand and the infrastructure to deliver his windmill energy never materialized. Undeterred, Pickens later invested in natural gas fields in British Colombia and along the Mexico border. Pickens’s view was that natural gas is the best option to fill our domestic energy needs and also to line his pockets with gold.
This is why Pickens was a multi-millionaire: He never waited until his wells ran dry, for the wind farm market to collapse, or for other investments to decline before he was off and running to the next big thing in the energy marketplace to replace his dwindling resources and keep him on top of the hill.
Your New Savings Source: Supply Utilization Management
Do you see how this concept relates to saving money? You can never stay with just one strategy, tactic, or savings source if you are to stay ahead in the savings game. Just like Pickens, you need to keep moving your money and resources to the next big thing to stay ahead of the curve. From my perspective, one such new source is supply utilization management.
If you aren’t tapping into this new and better way to save money for your healthcare organization, then you risk all of your current sources of savings drying up over the next few years. Why not take a page out of Pickens’s playbook and move to the next big thing, supply utilization management, which will give you unexploited savings for many years to come.
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