Just about every hospital or health system has a value analysis program in place with a minimum of one value analysis team or many value analysis teams at most health systems. Your team members consist of department heads and managers as well as some key line staff members that give you a good representation of the end customers, users, stakeholders, and experts. But who trains them? In most cases, they receive little or no training in value analysis or any other type of training related to cost/quality optimization. Why no training for these ever-important team members?
Crazy but True – VA Team Member Training is Ignored at Health Systems
Nobody likes to take the mandatory Human Resources training and the training associated with clinical and association certifications, but they do it all the same. These training courses do keep skills up to date, are required by clinical modalities, and in the case of HR, they maintain organizational standards and ethics. But those that sit on a value analysis team are often added to the team without any VA training and just go with the flow for the most part. This sounds a bit crazy to think that we are just relying on experience alone for each of our team members to analyze and assess the products and services that go through these value analysis decision machines.
No Value Analysis Program is Created Equally
Just because a few of your team members may have experience from being on your VA team or from a past organization does not mean that they know value analysis – let alone the customized modality that you are operating under. No value analysis program is the same at any hospital – they are all unique. Hence the need for training from basic to advanced to give your team members the methods and tools they need to be better team members on an ongoing basis versus just showing up for a meeting each month.
Ranking the Most Important Elements
- Establish a Mandatory Team Member Training Program (live or on-demand) for new value analysis team members regardless of their backgrounds at other organizations related to value analysis. This ensures that every team member understands value analysis as well as your health system’s particular modality of value analysis.
- Establish a Value Analysis Leadership Training Program to train your value analysis team leaders in leading your VA teams through the rigorous value analysis process. Just because you have leadership experience running a team does not mean that you fully understand the dynamics of running all aspects of a functioning value analysis team. It is better to set the standard for all team leaders and keep all teams operating optimally.
- Arrange Special VA and/or Cost/Quality Optimization Speaking or on-demand programs for your team members to learn advanced skills that don’t yet exist in your health system’s value analysis program. The speakers could be experts in areas such as Clinical Supply Utilization Management, Clinical Supply Benchmarking, or Assessing Evidence as related to products.
VA Team Members are Budget Holders
Because most VA team members are department heads and managers, they hold the keys to their budgetary dollars and make many departmental decisions in their day-to-day operations. With little or no training in VA, they are not applying anything to their day-to-day small and big dollar decisions for products and services in their departments. With more advanced training and a better understanding of the methods of value analysis, they could easily apply these best practices to their ongoing operations. It just makes better sense to train your VA team members.
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