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How To Save Big Money Throughout Your HealthCare Organization by Using Group Purchasing Services Everyone knows that Group Purchasing Plans can save you money and add rebates back to your bottom line, but how do you get this process going and in place throughout your facility with all departments participating ? Every department should be on the same page as Administration from the outset of moving into and using a group purchasing contract. Administration and purchasing departments must lead the hospital or healthcare facility team in insuring a smooth incorporation of the group purchasing effort into the every day ordering of supplies and services. Initially, all departments should produce their updated inventory list of supplies and compare each line item with the equivalent available through their group purchasing resource provider. Most group purchasing resource companies will provide this service for you. Then the list can then be total with the group purchasing pricing as compared to previous supplier and the savings can be appreciated by each department and then totaled for the hospital/healthcare facility as a whole. Most group purchasing contracts will save thousands of dollars a month and in larger facilities can produce savings in the hundreds of thousands of dollars a year. Group purchasing service providers will provide cost analysis and savings reports back to the hospital /healthcare facility and these should be reviewed by all departments. Some departments may want to continue to use a particular provider for a certain item or service and this is generally acceptable if there is a good reason for remaining with the supplier. But for the group purchasing savings to work, there should be a shift of 75-80% of supplies purchased over to the new group purchasing service provider. If the group purchasing service provider does not have a particular item or its equivalent, ask them to get this item. They can get nearly any item this takes you closer to your goal of standardization and maximizing cost control and savings throughout the facility. Many suppliers do not give you the best price always and one must continually scrutinize their supply and service cost. An example I recently observed is one in which a hospital had been going through financial difficulty and their suppliers had raised the cost on all of their supplies and services. The hospital was sold to another facility and during the 1st 4 months of operations the new facility continued to pay the old exaggerated prices for their supplies. Finally, purchasing produced a complete list of all supplies and services and asked competing suppliers to provide competitive pricing. The savings became immediately available and in general were more than $ 40,000.00 a month. This was a half million dollars a year in savings realized through the initiation of the inventory listing and line item price comparisons. Group purchasing is a must in today’s healthcare industry and allows the hospital and healthcare facility to standardize and maximize their savings and cost control. Ray Vaughn HealthCare Marketing Specialist Developing Successful Marketing Strategies for HealthCare
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