There is no doubt that value analysis is becoming a mission critical component of the healthcare industry’s supply chain departments with the pressing need to vet new products for cost/quality, solve problems with existing products, and ensure that functionality, reliability, and outcomes are realized. Even more significant is the need to validate that reimbursement is in place for these new products/services as money is tight everywhere. Millions of dollars go through most health systems’ value analysis teams which is why it is vital to have a true system in place to manage all aspects of value analysis as you cannot afford to have anything slip through the cracks.
Is There Value in Value Analysis Software?
Many healthcare organizations and value analysis professionals have seen the value of value analysis software to improve their workflow and capture valuable data that is necessary for their VA program to flow and be productive. This is very important because of the constant flow of new product requests, contract conversions, recalls, and traditional value analysis reviews.
Spreadsheets Don’t Cost Anything but the Manual Labor to Use These Costs More Than You Think
The days of trying to manage your entire value analysis program on a spreadsheet workbook and a shared file directory are coming to an end. Why? Because there is too much data, associated files, and empirical evidence that is necessary to be reviewed and stored that pushes the limitations of spreadsheets. For instance, you cannot upload any files to a spreadsheet, nor can you send emails and communications with this spreadsheet. There can only be one editor to your spreadsheet at any given time and you will have to manually key in any new product requests or value analysis study data which will chew up an incredible amount of time and not add a cent of value to your VA program.
Should a Mission Critical Process Like Value Analysis Be So Labor-Intensive?
I have always been very protective of value analysis teams’ time because they are critical to supply chain operations and costs, quality, and outcomes of each respective healthcare organization. The more that these teams accomplish, the better the costs, customer satisfaction, and quality results will be for your organization. But, if a value analysis and/or supply chain professional working in your organization’s VA program is spending 80% to 90% of their time manually keying and updating spreadsheets for your VAT meeting, you may need to ask yourself whether this is the best use of limited value analysis time and resources. Remember, value analysis processes have flows and they need to be productive flows at that or you are stuck backfilling and re-working your data throughout this process which just chews up time for your value analysis teams.
The longer an organization takes to handle product evaluations and contract conversions, the less time they will have to address bigger opportunities like consumption management, retrospective value analysis reviews, and standardization.
Value Analysis and Supply Chain Professionals Need Advanced Tools
There are so many more elements to value analysis than just tracking product line items on a spreadsheet which are vital to your success now and in the future. Things like managing your teams, meeting agendas, and tasks/follow-ups in an automated manner. Add in elements like key communications within your VA software to request more information/evidence, files, or feedback in the form of a poll or survey. Some VA software solutions automatically track the before, during, and after effect of all of your value analysis studies/reviews to tell you the true net results, and even better, this is done with no additional work for you!
Value Analysis is Cyclical
The products and services we perform value analysis studies on evolve and change but the relative functionalities that they represent are always there. This is why it is important to have a sustainable repository of data to view your value analysis history on. You have already done the good work and your VA software can fill you in on the fine details instead of totally reinventing the wheel. This cannot happen using spreadsheets when the past spreadsheets have been deleted due to an IT requirement to purge old unused spreadsheets from your shared directories.
Get More Value Out of Your Value Analysis Program with VA Software
Given the fact that value analysis continues to grow in our industry and is in fact becoming mission critical to our organizations’ quality and bottom lines, doesn’t it make sense that we have better solutions to efficiently manage and improve the productivity of our VA programs?
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