How to Start Broadening Your Management of Your Healthcare Organization’s Non-Labor Spend Without Adding Any Staff
I know that many supply chain managers are reluctant to broaden their management of their healthcare organizations non-labor spend because they believe that they don’t have the staffing that is necessary to do so. While this is a contributing factor as to why every supply chain management isn’t universally controlling all their healthcare organization’s purchases, it shouldn’t stop organizations from enlarging the scope of their non-labor spend management. Here’s some tips on how to do it:
- Make sure all hospital purchase service contracts at your healthcare organization have a purchase order number and are filed electronically centrally. This way you have a record of all purchase service contracts, by department, for future reference.
- Maintain a database (i.e., vendor’s name, service provided, annual spend, and contract anniversary date) of your healthcare organization’s purchase service spend. This way you have a record of all hospital or system-wide contracts and you can then decide what contract renewals you would like to get involved in. I recommend that you pick a few to work on annually to keep your vendors honest.
- If you aren’t bidding all your hospital purchase service contracts yourself, insist that your department head do. Have them provide proof with their request for purchase, that they did bid their proposed contract to at least three qualified bidders.
These three tips will ease your way into broadening your management of your non-labor spend without having to take full ownership of your healthcare organization purchase services process. However, if your senior management insists that you take over this responsibility in the future, you will be ready to address the challenge without too much hassle.