Recall management is a challenging area for healthcare organizations throughout the country as there is no set methodology, workflows, standardized tools, or training. Healthcare organizations are now developing their own recall management processes, workflows, and problem-solving tools. Luckily, a group of large health systems have gotten together to form the Recall Management Interest Group ( RMIG ) to help solve all the issues surrounding recall management and create best practices. This roun...
Jul 30, 2025•44 min•Season 1Ep. 1
How do you know when to start, stop, or continue with a value analysis review? There should be valid reasons why you are going to perform a value analysis review, why you may stop it midstream, or why it must continue out to a final resolution. These are valid issues that VA/supply chain team members deal with every day. Today I am talking about the “Start, Stop, Continue” conundrum. If you get this dynamic right, you will do big things and get great results for your health system. If you get it...
Mar 06, 2025•23 min
Supply chain and value analysis seem like an endless world of projects, initiatives, conversions, problems, recalls, and new product request evaluations that just go on and on. Once you think you have everything taken care of, other problems or initiatives show up. One thing is for sure, there also comes a lot of uncertainty with all these initiatives, projects, and new product requests. You need to know with confidence how you are going to handle these situations strategically to meet your goal...
Dec 31, 2024•43 min
Pricing is tight. Sometimes we can find a few big savings opportunities but many times we are guarding against price increases in these inflationary times. Senior leadership is always looking to find new ways to reduce costs without having to face things like major layoffs or hiring freezes. Clinical supply utilization management (CSUM) is still a new element that has not yet been embraced by most health systems’ value analysis programs, but they should be considering it as a new way to save big...
Oct 30, 2024•24 min
In this special podcast we spoke with Jonathan Jarashow, CEO of OmniChannel Health, and discussed the unique needs and challenges of the healthcare supply chain. Jonathan and I delved into issues related to pricing, backorders, shortages, and how strategic value analysis and companies like OmniChannel Health can help to alleviate these challenges.
Sep 13, 2024•31 min
In this special podcast we interviewed hospital supply chain experts from Vuemed, the leading solutions firm in inventory management. Chris Anderson, Director of Technical Program Management, and Katherine McAlister, Customer Support Operations Manager, delve into the UDI system in the medical device supply chain and clinical management.
Sep 04, 2024•21 min
Everyone knows that value analysis is a big money saver from the standpoint of cost avoidance with new product requests as well as picking the right products from contract conversions. Not to mention, managing the supply resilience and recall issues that occur oh so often which hospitals cannot afford to throw major dollars at anymore. Value analysis allows you to manage all these issues and keep costs in check, but is that all value analysis can do? The answer to that question is no, value anal...
Aug 07, 2024•18 min
A Special Interview with Mark Copeland
Apr 11, 2024•43 min
Let’s face it, inflation, clinical labor shortages, and market conditions are doing a number on our health systems’ bottom lines and forcing organizations to find new and better ways to eke out costs while maintaining quality and outcomes. This is easier said than done. Group purchasing organizations and your own custom contracting are readjusting to the new normal, but inflation has taken away the majority of what I call “home run savings opportunities” that we once had. There are still some si...
Apr 04, 2024•19 min
A new year will no doubt challenge many in our supply chain industry to up our game to new levels that we never thought possible. Let’s face it, there is a heck of a lot of change going on and higher demands from our Chief Financial Officers to optimize costs to mitigate the budgetary shortfalls that all health systems are seeing. All this on top of the new product requests, contract conversions, recall facilitation, and managing teams and projects. This year could be a daunting year if you don’...
Jan 29, 2024•19 min
Timing is everything and it does apply to the cost/value/quality world in our healthcare supply chain. In a perfect world, you would want to take the time and have your value analysis teams review all of their major product and/or service category spends and wring the towel dry on savings. But given that the average hospital purchases anywhere from 5K to 25K line items (major systems can be 25K to 85K in SKUs) with over 2,000 contracted categories, there just isn’t enough time in our teams’ agen...
Nov 28, 2023•19 min
Cost optimization is the art and science of saving money for our healthcare organizations and, at one time, used to be fairly easy by just implementing that right group purchasing contract and garnering the savings that the contract would bring at the best tier level. This has dramatically changed in the past few years with the record inflation and market conditions all but eliminating the big savings we once got from our group purchasing organizations. So where do we go from here? No matter whe...
Oct 19, 2023•19 min
What is the point of signing a new or renewal contract with the goal of saving money if the savings do not materialize as planned? That’s what savings validation is all about. In fact, here are four ways to leverage savings validation for maximum results.
Sep 15, 2023•18 min
This podcast was a conversation with Rob Corley, Chief Growth Officer, from Impensa Advisors. Rob has previously been a VP of Supply Chain Services and Analytics for major GPOs and has a vast wealth of savings knowledge and experience in advanced non-salary (supplies & services) expenses. Our goal was to share with you the true potential of looking beyond contract price and thinking outside the box but with your existing data sets in order to save as much as 7% to 15% of your total non-salar...
Aug 25, 2023•39 min
Everyone has a degree of experience in cost management, personal and business-wise, which we bring to the table in our value analysis meetings. There is also common sense that can guide us as well, but these experiences and common sense can only get us so far in the savings game. We need to have solid mindsets, knowledge-based tools, and some clever methods in order to find the next level of major savings led by value analysis. Here are the top four elements that will help you save big with your...
Jul 31, 2023•16 min
We are in tough budgetary times right now with regards to expense reduction at just about every health system in the country. Increased labor costs, supply chain issues, pricing increases, and inflation are really hurting our health systems’ bottom lines. As a value analysis professional, you may ask, how do we make a big splash in the savings bucket when a good amount of our efforts are related to new products, product problems, contract conversions, and recalls? The answer is, retrospective va...
Jun 01, 2023•20 min
With Suzanne Smith, Solutions Advisor, Lumere—a GHX Company, and Kerry Lepage, Clinical Nurse Leader and Director of Surgical Services at Maine Health. Suzanne and Kerry discuss how they got into healthcare supply chain and value analysis, successful strategic sourcing initiatives, the key stakeholders in value analysis, and how to gain buy-in for successful change.
May 15, 2023•48 min
We continue to see value analysis professionals working through a value analysis committee structure on new and renewal GPO contracts, new product requests, recalls, etc., even if they call them value analysis teams. Let me remind you that there is a big difference. To this end, here are three tips about value analysis committees vs. teams you can’t afford to miss:
Mar 17, 2023•20 min
I recently had a sales call with a hospital Director who was interested in starting a Clinical Supply Utilization Management (CSUM) program at his hospital. His reasons were that they had been doing as much as possible with GPO/contract price and standardization but that they were doing nothing about clinical supply utilization. Being new to the CSUM space, he thought that he could start small and benchmark something like the top 10-20 categories and go from there and asked if that was realistic...
Feb 23, 2023•22 min
As we begin a new year, it is good to take a step back and take a good look in the mirror at your value analysis and cost management programs. These are especially important right now in these tough economic times where your Chief Financial Officer is looking for every dollar of revenue and savings they can muster. Plus, it is just a good time to improve the things that need to be improved and make your value analysis program more efficient, time savvy, and get better results than you have in th...
Feb 06, 2023•23 min
Too often when a product, service, or technology is purchased, it is considered a completed transaction by your contract managers once they have obtained the best price, and then it is quickly forgotten. You might not realize it, but this is the #1 reason why you would have higher per patient day supply costs than your competition. Remember, price is the smallest element of your lifecycle cost equation. To this end, your optimal lifecycle cost drivers reside in the following six things that happ...
Dec 22, 2022•20 min
Everyone is back in saving money mode in a big way, but many of the streams of savings have fallen off or fizzled out altogether. That does not mean that there are not major savings still left in the healthcare supply chain, because there are. Most healthcare supply chain pundits and afficionados agree that the next big wave of healthcare supply chain savings is about to happen. This is right at your fingertips, but in order to gain this next level of savings you have to position your organizati...
Nov 22, 2022•32 min
I don’t think I need to tell you that the effects of the double whammy of the pandemic and inflation (8.5% as I write this article) is eating into your healthcare organization’s margins. That’s why the need for big supply chain savings couldn’t be greater as your healthcare organization’s volumes drop, supply costs soar, and increased agency nurses and temporary personnel usages are incurred to meet the demand of patient care. To assist you with this challenge, here are five strategies for big h...
Oct 13, 2022•28 min
Price is a very simple element of the healthcare supply chain procurement process. You order the product at that price and get the total spend for that line-item product. This is the total spend that we see every day from the vendors and manufacturers that we purchase from. Now envision this same scenario happening to thousands or even tens of thousands of products on an ongoing basis at your health system. Standard operating procedure, right? That is a lot of prices to look after and, yes, a he...
Aug 30, 2022•16 min
Now that the value analysis community has embraced value analysis software (VAS) as a best practice, more hospitals, systems, and IDNs are acquiring this easy to master technology. However, for those value analysis practitioners contemplating purchasing value analysis software in the future, here are some of the top mistakes to avoid that can be costly when deciding on your own VA software:
Jul 29, 2022•18 min
I don’t need to remind you that the cost of just about everything you buy is increasing due to supply chain shortages, higher labor cost, and surging energy prices, which all contribute to the high inflation rate we are now experiencing. In fact, many economists believe this situation can get worse in the coming months! Is there anything you can do about it? Our position is that there are three strategies for dealing with our healthcare organization’s rising supply chain costs that we would like...
Jun 29, 2022•20 min
There are many different iterations that value analysis has morphed, evolved, and emerged into leading up to 2022. Value analysis is predominantly applied to products, services, and technologies in the healthcare supply chain. The primary focus of value analysis practitioners is working with hospital and/or system-based value analysis teams that are assigned categories of products and services to review. The main goal is to validate the efficacy of these products and services but also to assist ...
Jun 15, 2022•26 min
We are often asked how a healthcare supply chain organization can get better than just good. Our answer is always to employ KPIs (or key performance indicators) to quantify and measure your supply chain performance over time. This way your employees and teams have goals to shoot for, milestones to meet, and insights into your operations.
May 19, 2022•24 min
Value analysis software is here to stay in the healthcare supply chain and there are good reasons why. Those who employ value analysis software at their hospital, system, or IDN know that it easily consolidates all of their information in one platform. This aids in vetting new product, service, and technology requests and can provide important resources for evidenced-based decisions. Slowly and surely, the days of value analysis professionals toiling with multitudes of Word documents and spreads...
Apr 14, 2022•21 min
We recently conducted a webinar for our value analysis/supply chain community on the benefits of integrating supply utilization management (SUM) into their value analysis program because we believe there is nowhere else to go to achieve double-digit supply chain expense savings. Here are some highlights from this webinar. Over the last 76 years value analysis has evolved from a purely manufacturing technique to a universally applied strategy to save money and improve quality in all industries wo...
Apr 01, 2022•23 min
