Value Analysis Strategies

The Strategic Value Analysis Planning process provides the vehicle to obtain this ownership. The SVAP begins with an invitation by your champion, or your hospital or system’s executive management team members, to a one-hour orientation meeting as the first of three steps in the buy-in process as delineated below:

Step 1: Executive Management Orientation: The orientation session starts with an exercise to determine if your executive management team is ready for the challenge of introducing your new or refined supply value analysis program initiative at your healthcare organization. The exercise that we use to open a dialogue with the participants is to ask them what roadblocks or barriers they envision politically, culturally, operationally, attitudinally and transformationally that would hold back their new or refined supply value analysis program. The answers to these questions are listed on a flip chart and discussed until all participants have found answers to avoiding the roadblocks and barriers that are identified in our discussions.

With few exceptions, we have found that with just this short dialogue between executive management members, the buy-in process for your new or refined supply value analysis program will start to germinate. However, if for some reason you find that your executive management team members cannot gain consensus on how to overcome roadblocks and barriers, or there is no enthusiasm for the supply value analysis program you are introducing, it is time to regroup with your champion. You should determine what the next step would be in reintroducing your program, assuming the timing was right.

Assuming that you are getting a green light for your supply value analysis program at this juncture in your orientation, your next step is to review, with your executive management team, your new supply value analysis program’s philosophy, principles and practices, and answer any and all questions on how the new program will work at your hospital or system. At this meeting you will also ask your executive management team members to appoint a steering committee chairperson (your champion, if possible), a recorder, and up to ten members who would represent your hospital or system’s executive management team’s (e.g., CFO, CNO, CMO, etc.) interests by guiding and managing your new supply value analysis program. Your value analysis director, manager or coordinator would be an ex officio member of the Value Analysis Steering Committee. The steering committee would conduct hour-long monthly business meetings to discuss, monitor and guide your hospital or system’s value analysis program. 

Step 2:  Strategic Value Analysis Planning Session: Soon after the appointment of your Value Analysis Steering Committee, you would ask your chairperson to invite his/her committee members to a three-hour Strategic Value Analysis Planning session where the members of the committee would design your new or refined program. This planning session will enable these members to be intimately involved (involvement = ownership) in the planning at a high and low level in the detail of your program.

Step 3: Have Each Member Actively Involved with VA Teams: If at all possible, have each and every one of your Value Analysis Steering Committee members become actively involved with your new initiative by: (1) attending the value analysis training program, and (2) by volunteering as administrative champion for your value analysis team(s).  This will enable them to see firsthand the challenges and opportunities that your supply value analysis team(s) are facing, which will enable them to make informed decisions at their monthly steering committee business meetings.

These three steps are the critical success factors in obtaining buy-in and commitment to your new or refined supply value analysis program by your executive management team in the short and long term, thus giving you the foundation that you will need to succeed and sustain your new or refined supply value analysis program for many years to come.