Publication by Medical Dealer
From logistics to management to material goods, supply chains can account for anywhere from 25 to 40 percent of the overall budgets of health care institutions. That huge chunk of capital can also be the cloudiest part of the financial picture at any hospital group – and in a political climate that threatens to repeal the value-based reimbursement standards toward which national health care reforms have been pivoting in the past eight years, keeping a tighter grip on the purse strings may prove more of a challenge than the years of those readjustments.
Todd Ebert, President and CEO of the Healthcare Supply Chain Association (HSCA), said health care providers “continue to need to pay very close attention to their supply chain,” seeking the best-quality products to deliver value-based care. The challenge, however, remains finding ways to implement these priorities within the structure of resource management itself.
“How do you integrate value-based purchasing into the supply chain?” Ebert said. “If there’s a[n equipment] failure, how do you then go back and invoke value-based purchasing? There’s a lot to be figured out so that when organizations spend their money they do so with the understanding that they’re going to get quality and value.”
As in many areas of value-based care, pinpointing the intersection of responsibilities among patients, providers, and suppliers to leverage the greatest patient outcome –and the greatest rate of reimbursement – can lead to various parties trying to offload responsibilities or claim successes that will minimize obligation and maximize profitability. Addressing those concerns in an environment that has been focused on outcome-based procedures requires a greater granularity of process so that it works for all parties.
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