How Can Supply Chain Do More with Less in the Face of Unprecedented Turnover?

• Dan Hermes, Director, Advisory Services, Lumere, a GHX company

With so many startling headlines describing employee turnover in healthcare these days, it’s natural to wonder how supply chain teams can possibly continue delivering speed to value as the ranks of experienced workers dwindle.

WATCH ON-DEMAND: Doing More with Less: Enhancing Supply Chain Efficiency in the Age of High Turnover

Employee turnover in healthcare is affecting everyone from senior executives to front-end clinicians, resulting in staffing shortages, decision delays and, ultimately, poorer patient outcomes. How can supply chain teams keep up and continue delivering speed to value for their health system in the face of these mounting challenges?

How to drive implant order change at your organization and with vendor partners

“You need at least one person—if you have more it's even better—that has a slightly unhealthy degree of stubbornness.” Robert Hatkins, Director, Procurement and Dock Services, Stanford Health Care

Resistance to change is a common problem faced by health systems when proposing initiatives that will impact how individuals and teams perform their jobs. It is human nature to fear the unknown, even if change has the potential to makes things easier for those involved.

How data supports initiatives to automate implant orders

“Not to beat a dead horse but I’m going to say it again. It starts with your data. You’ve got to clean your house up—make sure everything is clean, contracts aligned, pricing loaded—and then you can build from there. If that's not right, it gets messy, a lot of back and forth, and nobody is going to be satisfied.” -Franco Sagliocca, Corporate Director, Supply Chain, Mount Sinai Health System.

 After years of trying, health systems are successfully automating implant orders thanks to technology advancements, greater provider/supplier collaboration and the desire to find new ways to drive costs and waste out of the healthcare supply chain.

No Time for Mistakes: Defining a Clear Process for New Product Introductions

• Suzanne Smith, Solution Advisor, Lumere

As hospital supply chain and value analysis teams currently face unprecedented prioritization and efficiency challenges, they need to become nimbler than ever before. According to data from the American Hospital Association, labor and supply costs have recently seen 15-20% percent spikes driven by staffing issues and supply disruptions. At the same time, operating margins have declined by 20%. All this leads to more fires with fewer people to fight them.

Eye-opening Facts Increase Urgency to Automate Bill-only Implant Orders

If we’re automating orders for gloves and gauze, why not implants?

Health systems have long had the ability to automate ordering of common medical/surgical supplies that are stored at the hospital and replenished as needed. This is done through the GHX Exchange, using purchase orders (POs), and then are billed through invoices.

But orders for implantable devices, such as artificial hip and knee components, have been difficult for health systems to manage. This product category includes a very wide range of items, and they often come in as many shapes and sizes as patients do, greatly increasing the number of variations on a single item.

Why now is the time to automate your implant orders

“I would say that we were the driver in helping our teams understand what was possible. That would be one thing we had to continuously do and would say to all of you as well. This is possible. It can be done.”  Jack Koczela, Froedtert Health, Director of Supply Chain Services

Health systems and their suppliers have long looked for ways to simplify implant orders to reduce costs, save time, improve contract and invoice accuracy, and provide better patient care by making sure the right implants are available.

During the 2022 GHX Summit Automating Bill-Only Implant Orders panel presentation, supply chain leaders from three U.S. health systems, Froedtert Health, Mount Sinai Health System and Stanford Health Care, explained to attendees why the time to automate implant orders is now and shared their stories on how they did it.

WATCH ON-DEMAND: Navigating New Product Introductions in a Turbulent Era

With supply costs rising upwards of 20 percent since 2019, having an effective product evaluation process in place at your health system is more critical than ever. During this conversation, GHX Lumere’s Erinn Zacharias, Ph.D., and Suzanne Smith, BSN, RN, highlight the most important considerations for evaluating and approving new medical devices, particularly when a quick decision is needed.

Embracing a Digital Transformation Strategy: Leading Healthcare Suppliers Make Doing Business Easier

Most would agree that being easy to do business with is a way to set your business apart and deepen customer relationships. It is certainly so for suppliers in the competitive healthcare industry. Leading suppliers are looking at the complete customer experience and acting on the opportunity to support healthcare providers’ needs by embracing a digital transformation strategy.

Leveraging Data for Analytics and Insights: Leading Healthcare Suppliers Know the Shared Value

Leading healthcare suppliers are embracing the needs of their healthcare provider customers for more automation from end to end in supply chain. A well-planned digital transformation strategy helps to contain costs, support supply chain resiliency, and distinguish leading suppliers from the rest of the pack.

From the first step of digitization comes an abundance of data. But for all stakeholders to reap the value from the output, we need a way to understand and put the data to use in a way that drives better patient outcomes. Predictive analytics can help suppliers and customers support critical business decisions impacting patient care.

Laying a foundation for the future: How will healthcare suppliers respond to an increasingly complex healthcare supply chain?

There is more complexity coming to healthcare supply chain. This will require support for value-based care and preparing for the continued rise in healthcare delivery outside of a traditional hospital setting. Precision, accuracy and timing for supply delivery will continue to grow in importance. Establishing a foundation that will support your customers’ needs today and for quickly emerging trends is the critical third step in making it easier for healthcare providers to conduct business with you.

Advice from Supply Chain Experts: Four Best Practices for Smooth Leadership Transitions

• Bonnie Lai, PhD, General Manager, Lumere

We’re currently living through the "Great Reshuffling," with unprecedented numbers of members of the workforce rethinking their careers. Hospital supply chain teams are no exception and managing through this change is top of mind for healthcare supply chain leaders.

WATCH ON-DEMAND: Supply Chain Leaders' Best Advice for Smooth Leadership Transitions

Co-sponsored by Becker's Hospital Review
The healthcare industry is no stranger to the "Great Resignation," reporting an estimated 6.4 percent quit rate in 2021, according to data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Despite these workforce challenges, many individuals and organizations are discovering opportunities for growth and necessary change. Hospital supply chain is no exception.

Best in Class: GHX Lumere Partner Spectrum Health Wins Top Supply Chain Award

The past 18 months clearly have been some of the most difficult in history for healthcare supply chains. However, there are health systems that stand as beacons of tenacity, innovation and efficiency in uncertain times. Spectrum Health, the 2022 recipient of Supply & Demand Chain Executive's "Top Supply Chain Projects Award," is one such organization. 

The Risks of Overlooking AP Automation

(Two Minute Read)

While healthcare organizations have increasingly adopted digital processes over the past decade, COVID-19 threw fuel on the fire, accelerating digital transformation as a necessity to successfully navigate the pandemic —think telehealth, remote patient monitoring, etc.

Save Your Top AP Talent from Back-office Burnout

(1 Minute Read)

When we think about staff burnout in healthcare, frontline clinicians are the first people who come to mind. But the pandemic has also put extreme pressure on back-office teams, particularly supply chain in the scramble to procure and pay for critical items from both primary and secondary suppliers.

5 Questions to Assess Your Strategic Digital Direction

(Two Minute Read)

Nearly all U.S. health system executives surveyed (99%) say it’s important to invest in digital transformation to improve outcomes and reduce cost of care.¹ However, when digital transformation is not fully understood, then it’s also not well planned, processes are only partially automated, and investments are marginalized.

There’s No Mystery Behind the Clinically Integrated Supply Chain—Only Teamwork

Cultivating the shared organizational vision and strategy that a clinically integrated supply chain enables is essential in the face of increasing expenses and declining margins. But with so many different methodologies and frameworks crowding the conversation, it’s no wonder that the path to a clinically integrated supply chain can feel shrouded in mystery.

International Nurses Day: How healthcare organizations are empowering nurses to improve patient outcomes

• Neah Downs Dybas, Director of Customer Loyalty

With Unite 360 Advocates Ryan Rotar, Gary Gremel, Sr., Mary K. McCarthy, Angela Stoddard and Judy Webb-Hapgood

This year, it’s more appropriate than ever that we celebrate International Nurses Day on the birthday of Florence Nightingale. Schoolchildren are told of her as "The lady with the lamp," leading the charge to care for wounded English soldiers in Victorian times. History portrays her as a kindly caregiver. But she was also the woman who used data analysis and data visualization and modern medical training to pioneer the field of professional nursing and take it to a higher level.

WATCH ON-DEMAND: Demystifying the Clinically Integrated Supply Chain - A Panel Discussion

The clinical and operational sides of healthcare have long worked in silos. Fortunately, the industry is now recognizing the need for a truly collaborative culture in which the clinically integrated supply chain becomes a catalyst for results, driving decisions based on a single view of data and backed by evidence. However, fostering this culture can feel like a daunting and mysterious task.

Want to improve physician-supply chain collaboration? Use physician-level data

• Kirtan Patel, MD, Director of Medical Advising & Consulting

From providing frontline care to holding leadership positions, physicians drive key quality and financial decisions across the care continuum. That’s why physician engagement must be an ongoing focus for health systems, especially in the era of value-based care.

Countering the rise of workplace violence in healthcare

The role of visitor management beyond the pandemic

For many people, the phrase “unprecedented times” is washed out and watered down. But for over-worked, understaffed healthcare facilities, the term’s meaning grows deeper by the day.

Covid-19 might be the newest unforeseen threat to hit healthcare workers, but it's just the latest stressor for medical facilities already challenged with potentially hostile work environments.

GHX Named Winner of the 2022 Workday Partner Innovation Awards in the Healthcare Industry

• Pete Nelson, Vice President and General Manager, Global Alliances

GHX announced it was named a winner of the 2022 Workday Partner Innovation Awards in the Healthcare Industry.  

Modernizing the supply chain to create a future where affordable, quality healthcare is possible

• Tina Vatanka Murphy, Division President, Value Based Care

As health systems continue the shift toward value-based care and seek to overcome the challenges wrought by COVID-19, they face significant pressures due to workforce shortages, reimbursement challenges, mounting supply costs and persistent sourcing difficulties. In their return to this post-pandemic reality, leaders are pursuing opportunities to transform their businesses to be more operationally efficient and cost-effective while maximizing revenue opportunities and improving patient care.

Are We Still ‘In This Together?’: Healthcare Supply Chain Faces the Great Resignation

• Neah Downs Dybas, Director of Customer Loyalty

With featured advocates Brian Dolan, Vice President, Resource Management, Bayhealth Medical Center, and Ryan Rotar, System Director, ERP Solutions, UNC Health

As we approach the two-year anniversary of the start of the pandemic, the mental and physical impact on healthcare workers continues to have consequences that will play out for years to come. Already this year we’ve seen an organized nationwide protest from nurses who say that working conditions have deteriorated as new waves of Covid-19 patients push hospitals to their limits.

The healthcare workforce is clearly taking a direct hit. According to an October 2021 survey by Morning Consult, “18% of health care workers have quit their jobs during the COVID-19 pandemic, while another 12% have been laid off.” Moreover, nearly one-third of those workers who’ve kept their jobs say they’ve contemplated a career change.

Trends for 2022 and Beyond for Medical Device Company-to-Hospital Supply Chains

• Denise Odenkirk, Vice President, Supplier Sales

Following nearly two years of disruption from a global pandemic, natural disasters, and even an unprecedented shipping canal blockage, trends that emerged out of necessity are now more likely the expected way of doing business.

In this post, Denise Odenkirk, Vice President of Supplier Sales for GHX lends her perspective on the driving forces behind the trends and the value to the industry.

*Republished in part with permission from BONEZONE, www.BONEZONEpub.com.

Automate or Delegate? Digitizing Your Strategy for Supply Chain Data Management

Removing inaccuracies and inefficiencies from data can help healthcare proactively address inevitable disruptions, pivot faster and build stronger supplier relationships. The result is a more resilient supply chain that helps to drive better patient outcomes and cost savings. But with constant changes and multiple data sources, keeping item data clean is arduous.

Fortunately, supply chain teams can now turn to new capabilities in their cloud ERPs to synchronize data cleansing, correct errors, and fill gaps. This includes all item data (e.g., item masters, P.O. history and contract data) that multiple teams depend on.

During a recent webinar, GHX’s Pete Nelson and Keith Lohkamp, Senior Director, Healthcare Industry Strategy at Workday, discussed how and why automation has evolved to accelerate the transformation to cloud-based, digital supply chain management. They were joined by Prisma Health Director of Supply Chain Information Systems Leslie Thomas, who described the bold steps that her organization took to integrate a cloud-based data management solution and service that keeps their supply chain data current and synchronized.

Elementary My Dear Watson: Why Evidence Matters to Your Clinically Integrated Supply Chain

• Erinn Zacharias, PhD, Executive Director, Research & Insights. Lumere, a GHX Company

Just as Sherlock Holmes relied on physical evidence to solve mysteries, modern-day supply chain leaders must use clinical evidence in the value analysis process to help make cost-effective, patient-focused product decisions.  

As hospital leaders seek to reduce clinical spend while improving clinical outcomes and financial resiliency during the protracted COVID-19 pandemic, reliable evidence has never been more important. Supply chain professionals are feeling pressure to more rapidly gather and interpret clinical data and insights for frontline care teams – often without formal training in interpreting scientific literature.

Bayhealth Medical Center: Cloud ERP Migration and the Power of Trust

• Neah Downs Dybas, Director of Customer Loyalty

Healthcare providers are increasingly moving to cloud-based ERP systems to achieve more nimble and leaner processes, make more data-driven decisions and lower operational costs. There is much to be learned from forerunners who continue to reveal trends, benefits and opportunities for improvement.