Robert T. Yokl, President/CEO, SVAH Solutions

We congratulate the supply chain/value analysis practitioners that are attacking their utilization misalignments (i.e., the wasteful and inefficient consumption, misuse, misapplication, and value mismatches in your supply streams) when they get time to do so or when they stumble over them.

However, this isn’t giving enough attention to these unwanted and unneeded costs to register any significate reading on the Supply Chain Expense Richter Scale. Instead, you need a full court press, at all times, to uncover and then eliminate your utilization misalignments for these three reasons:

1. Your healthcare organization is losing millions of dollars while you wait for the right time, the right staffing, and the right circumstance to attack your  utilization misalignments. 

2. Quality issues go unresolved because you aren’t continuously tracking, trending, and monitoring how your products, services, and technologies are being employed in your clinical departments.

3. Time wasting and inefficient practices continue to be a common occurrence in your clinical departments since little or no effort is being made to discover and eliminate them.

These three reasons are why clinical supply utilization management can’t be a “sometime” thing. It needs to be an automatic, systematic, and nonstop tracking, trending, and monitoring of the tens-of-thousands of products, services, and technologies you buy and utilize annually. Any less effort than this won’t result in moving the needle on your Supply Chain Expense Richter Scale.