To stay ahead of the curve, we have always searched out advanced management techniques that could improve our hospital, system, or IDN client’s supply chain/value analysis performance. We started this practice when we discovered that most new supply chain/value analysis innovations are tested, refined, and proven in industry before they are eventually adopted at healthcare organizations. We would like to share with you one of these best practices we have identified that we believe will greatly improve your value analysis team’s performance. It is called key performance indicators.
Key performance indicators or KPIs are employed to quantify, measure, and monitor your value analysis performance. This way your VA teams will have goals to shoot for, milestones to meet, and then gain vital insights into your healthcare organization’s supply/value streams. For example, how would you know if you were spending three times as much historically for your orthopedic cement, that you were utilizing 27% more bath blankets than your peers, or that your VA team’s meeting absenteeism is twice more than it was six months ago? The answer to this question is that you wouldn’t know unless you employed KPIs in selected operational categories (usually mission critical) to ensure the success of your supply value analysis program. With this said, here are five additional reasons why we believe KPIs will optimize your VA team’s performance – almost overnight:
KPIs Will Boost Healthcare Value Analysis Performance
1. Help Establish Goals and Objectives: All high-performance value analysis teams that we have trained, coached, or observed have annual goals and objectives that they have agreed too. These goals and objectives are a mix of savings, quality, and outcomes that keep their VA team members engaged and moving forward, all because they are measuring and managing their outcomes. It starts with establishing key performance indicators.
2. Pinpoint Target Savings: Key performance indicators can help your VA team(s) identify where your best savings opportunities reside by quantifying, measuring, and monitoring the waste and inefficiencies in your supply/value streams, such as, how the cost of your office supplies per patient day is twice that of your peer cohort group.
3. End Learning Gaps: Based on our empirical experience, 20% of all product misuse or misapplication is due to lack of training of clinical staff; therefore, your KPIs can help your VA team(s) be made aware of what clinical departments require remedial training on certain product categories.
4. Detect Unfavorable Trends: By monitoring your KPIs, over time, you can spot favorable and unfavorable patterns and trends that your VA team(s) need to investigate, like your reference lab cost per test increasing by 33% in one year.
5. Better Decision Making: If your Surgical Value Analysis Team knew, because of a KPI you had initiated, that their operating room packs were being utilized at a higher rate than normal, wouldn’t they decide to investigate why this is happening?
If you are looking for a surefire management technique to help your VA team(s) to get better than just good, then we would highly recommend that you investigate further by employing KPIs to quantify, measure, and monitor those things that are mission critical to the success of your value analysis program.
| About Robert T. Yokl, Founder & Chief Value Strategist for SVAH Solutions |
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| Robert T. Yokl is President and Chief Value Strategist at SVAH Solutions. He has four decades of experience as a healthcare supply chain manager and consultant, and also is the co-creator of the Clinitrack Value Analysis Software and Utilizer Clinical Utilization Management Dashboard that moves beyond price for even deeper and broader clinical supply utilization savings. Yokl is a member of Bellwether League’s Bellwether Class of 2018. https://www.SVAH-Solutions.com https://www.SavingsValidator.com |
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