For as long as I can remember, value analysis teams have always met on a monthly basis and the majority of VA teams still meet monthly only. This means that at best you will only have 12 value analysis team meetings in any given year, if they don’t coincide with holidays. When you think of all the new product requests, contract conversions, savings and quality initiatives, as well as solving problems and recalls, the old once-a-month really buries you agenda wise.
It’s Much More Than a Simple Numbers Game
What I am proposing here is that you should have at least two value analysis team meetings a month for each of your VA teams you have in place. As for things like steering committees, they can remain monthly as they have a different functional purpose in the value analysis schema. The end result will give you 24 team meetings per team. When you factor in the holidays, it usually ends up being about 22 meetings per year. Much better from a productivity standpoint. We have found with our clients that the meetings take less time (30-60 minutes for VAT) and much of the 30-day crunch aspect has been removed from the team meetings and been replaced with more of an ongoing flow. This flow keeps things moving along nicely and we rarely ever hear that there is not enough time or that twice a month meetings are too much.
More Time to Do More Important Things
Value analysis team meetings are packed with time consuming projects and initiatives. However, there are some that may not get much time at all in the VAT meetings but need to have more time. With these added new meetings, you can give more attention to initiatives like cost reduction which every CFO is looking for value analysis teams to step up and do more of.
Value Analysis Meetings are All About Prioritization
Everything that is done in a value analysis team meeting is important but there is also the prioritization of agenda items and in many cases these get pushed to the next meeting. With two meetings a month, the push is only for two weeks, and you do not lose continuity of workflow/communication with your customers/stakeholders, vendor product trial interactions, strategic sourcing initiatives, or ongoing cost projects.
Having More Meetings May Actually Make the Value Analysis Workflow Go Smoother
I know the knee jerk reaction you get when you first think about doubling up on your value analysis team meetings. If you have more than one team, which many organizations do, then you may start to look at this like a daunting challenge. There are more positives than negatives to switching to two meetings per month per team that you should consider. Value analysis is becoming mission critical for healthcare organizations which means we need to have better continuity from these teams and the easiest way to add more continuity and flow to the teams is to go from once-a-month VAT meetings to twice a month. Simple!
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