Robert T. Yokl, President, SVAH Solutions
We as a company have been proselytizing for years that purchased services (i.e., services purchased from an outside contractor) are equal to or even greater in importance than supply chain expenses because of their huge costs, which are growing exponentially at your hospital, system, or IDN. Even a hospital with 7.5 occupied beds could have $10 million in purchased services expenses. Now, we are going to put our money where our mouths have been by introducing the first edition of the Healthcare Purchased Services Magazine; providing ideas, insight, and understanding to master this supply chain discipline.
It is the mission of the Healthcare Purchased Services Magazine to fill in the educational gaps of this new and emerging supply chain discipline. We call it a supply chain discipline since there is no other department or division in your healthcare organization that has the time, talent, and experience to effectively manage these multi-million-dollar contracts. Even your GPOs can’t provide a contract that fits all of their members’ requirements, since each provider’s functional specifications are different.
Today, if you are a supply chain manager, you might think that purchased services management isn’t in your wheelhouse, but let me assure you that it is. Even if you aren’t managing every one of your hospital, system, or IDN’s purchased service contracts, some do come across your desk each month. With this said, we believe that you need every educational advantage possible, like this magazine, to teach you how to manage and control your purchased service contracts with the lowest in-use costs possible.
For you see, it’s not the contract price that is important, but the lifecycle cost of your contracts that you are aiming to control at the lowest per patient day cost possible. You also need to have a working knowledge about legal, safety, and quality issues that could affect the integrity of your contracts.
Naturally, we are excited about this new venture to bring you the most reliable information on purchased services topics you can put into effect immediately to reduce your purchased services’ costs and improve your service quality. We hope you are too!
