When I formed my first healthcare value analysis team decades ago, there were no value analysis tools available, not even an electronic spreadsheet. Everything we used to manage our VA program (agendas, minutes, value analysis requests, project management, etc.) were all manual systems. Did my VA team save money, improve quality, and provide safe products, services, and technologies to our end-users without the right tools?
The answer is yes, but we didn’t know what we didn’t know at the time.
Fast forward a few years (circa mid to late 1990’s), and we developed software that did all the time consuming manual value analysis work I just talked about in addition to providing online access to all a healthcare organization’s purchases, by commodity group, for a one-year period. The benefit of this system was that VA team members could slice and dice their hospital, system, or IDN’s purchasing data searching (e.g., perform a ABC Analysis) for savings opportunities without once talking to their materials management department, which was always time consuming to do so.
We later developed a value analysis tool to identify (i.e., value analysis analytics) the best value analysis savings candidates for value analysis teams to study. Thereby, eliminating dry holes that were associated with prior value analysis savings tools we created. Now, a value analysis team had a 96% chance of saving money on each value analysis project they decided to undertake without needless time searching for savings opportunities. All the savings VA teams need now can be gotten with three clicks of their mouse.
Today, we have value analysis tools that do all the above while they can also map a team’s value analysis savings opportunities right back to a procedure, surgeon, or department. This again, saves time and effort for overworked value analysis team members.
Why is the right value analysis tool important?
Because time, money, and resources are scarce in any hospital, system, or IDN today, you therefore need to have the latest value analysis productivity tools that can do the heavy lifting for you. Otherwise, you will never get all of your value analysis jobs done that need to get done on time, efficiently, and in an expedient manner.
