There are so many more areas to track and manage for your value analysis and supply chain savings and quality improvement programs, but these are good to start with.
1. Look at Your Healthcare Organization’s Bottom Line – Why? You must always know where you stand with your overall organizational goals. You don’t want to be blindsided. How? Track your net operating expenses from your net revenues to find out what your bottom line is at any given point in time.
2. Look at Your Overall Supply Chain Cost Drivers – Why? You must always know whether you are gaining or losing ground with your supply chain costs. If you are losing ground then you must add more savings opportunities and studies to your VA agendas and push back on new products and technologies that will only add to costs. How? Calculate overall supply costs by net operating expenses – simple! Keeping track of this on an ongoing basis will give you the tail of the tape.
3. Look at Your Top Departmental Cost Drivers – Why? These represent 80% of your supply costs, so if you are starting to run over you want to know what area of your organization you need to focus on. How? The big drivers are Surgery Cost per Surgery Cases, Cath/EP Lab Cost Per Cath/EP Cases, Imaging Cost Per Imaging Procedures, and Pharmacy Cost Per Adjusted Patient Day.
4. Look at Your Total Cost of New Products – Why? You should always be aware of how much you are adding to your supply chain costs at any given point in time. New products and technologies tend to explode in certain cases and if your cost increase estimates do not equal what is actually going on then you must take action. How? Use your value analysis tracking spreadsheet or Software System to track this.
5. Look at Your Total Savings from Your VA Program – Why? The days of saving as much as we can save on each value analysis study/analysis are no longer valid. We must know with certainty how much we have saved or not saved on each and every study. You should always offset your savings from your new product/technology increases to show a true net savings figure. How? Use your value analysis tracking spreadsheet or Software System to track this.