Robert T. Yokl, President/CEO, SVAH Solutions
Too often, I see value analysis practitioners “winging it” as opposed to investing in value analysis education so that they can understand the proper way to address a particular value analysis challenge. For instance, I have seen VA practitioners approve a GPO contract because it has an excellent price instead of performing a functional analysis to determine if the product, service or technology is needed at all. To paraphrase Benjamin Franklin, this investment in value analysis knowledge pays the best interest for you and your healthcare organization. The purpose of value analysis education is to:
- Understand the preferred VA protocols in all cost, quality and safety issues you might be faced with.
- Improve your critical and creative thinking so you can more readily look for lower cost alternatives to what you are doing now.
- Develop solutions for product, service or technology challenges facing your customers.
- Learn to ask the right questions to understand how a product, service or technology is employed at your healthcare organization.
- Learn change management skills to help VA practitioners change the behaviors of their customers.
From my standpoint, value analysis education is the key to unlocking new ideas on how to go about your value analysis job instead of creating your own job description, learning on the job by trial and error, or being educated about value analysis from an incumbent that hasn’t been trained in the classic tenets of value analysis either. In summary, the reason VA education is mission critical today in healthcare is that value analysis is more than getting the best price at the pump!
