“With the certainty that Clinical Supply Utilization Management gives you, you will be able to sustain lower costs, optimization quality, and weed out inefficiencies in your supply chain.”
Healthcare supply chain organizations operate in a constant state of motion, making it nearly impossible to closely monitor every contract, product, service, price point, and utilization detail in real time. On top of that, routine challenges such as product issues, recalls, special requests, stockouts, and a wide range of unexpected events are a regular part of the weekly workload. Simply put, Supply Chain is one of the most dynamic and fast-paced functions within any health system.
Is Clinical Supply Utilization Management Mission Critical?
Supply chain management is uniquely qualified to handle all these areas, but the big X-Factor is how much time can be spent on areas such as utilization management when it may not be deemed a mission critical problem and thus is often overlooked. But at some point, utilization overspend, waste, inefficiencies, feature-rich products, and value mismatches are going to have to be addressed as they can dramatically affect costs, quality, and even outcomes. The challenge for Supply Chain is knowing where the starting point is when you have hundreds of categories and thousands of products and services to look after – with very little time.
With So Little Time, You Must Be Certain of Your Next Steps!
The good news is that implementing a holistic Clinical Supply Utilization Management (CSUM) system provides clear, data-driven insights into both high-performing areas and those that need attention. With a patient-volume-centric, system-wide CSUM system in place, you gain the confidence and clarity needed to strategically decide which areas to prioritize — and which ones can wait. This is priceless today as time is one of the biggest resources that Supply Chain and Value Analysis Professionals are short on. Having a system that fast tracks everything and puts you in the driver’s seat to make decisions on action points for savings and quality optimization is ideal.
There is Nothing Better than Certainty of Purpose
CSUM provides the clarity to identify issues that aren’t tied to price, but instead point to potential concerns with quality, consumption, or waste within your current supply chain. This goes beyond traditional spend management, which often only shows that costs increased — leaving you to accept common explanations like “we were busier” or “patient volume was higher.” With a Clinical Supply Utilization Management system that aligns product usage with patient volume centric data across both major and minor products, you gain the certainty that identified optimization opportunities are real, measurable, and actionable.
CSUM is Always There for You
While CSUM may not be mission critical in the way that missing a product or an unavailable IV tray could impact a case or disrupt departments, it plays a vital long-term role. CSUM is a continuous improvement system that lets you strategically choose when to focus on savings and quality optimization — on your schedule. Even better, it does the heavy lifting for you, eliminating the need to reinvent the wheel. This means you can make meaningful progress, even with the limited time you’re able to dedicate to CSUM efforts.
The bottom line is that with the certainty that Clinical Supply Utilization Management gives you, you will be able to sustain lower costs, optimization quality, and weed out inefficiencies in your supply chain that are worse than you realized. My philosophy is that it is better to have a CSUM system in place that allows you to cover all your bases versus not having a system at all.
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