Value analysis (VA) has a 35-year history of saving money in healthcare,
but it has gained even more importance, credibility and momentum now that
the 2010 Affordable Care Act legislation has been signed into law. This is
because saving money (and making it stick) is now mission critical for any
and all healthcare organizations’ fiscal fitness and survival.
It’s also important to note that VA is no longer an individual effort,
but an organized team effort and that’s where value analysis shines. By
definition, value analysis is a function-oriented team approach to
providing, designing or investigating the right functions (primary,
secondary and aesthetic) for the multi-millions of dollars of products,
services and technologies that are required to operate a healthcare
organization and then search for lower cost alternatives to meet those
functions exactly. As you can see, VA has matured, over the years, into a
comprehensive, complex and multi-disciplined approach to supply chain cost
management.
The only downside to value analysis is keeping track of all the moving parts
(people, projects and performance), especially now that some healthcare
organizations have six to 10 active value analysis teams with a 100 or more
team members. You can just imagine how these team dynamics can quickly
become a formidable task to measure, manage and control such a diverse and
complex process.
That doesn’t mean there isn’t an answer! The secret, we have
found, to organizing, managing, and controlling and keeping score with a
healthcare organizations multi-disciplined value analysis teams is to
automate all of their team-related activities. In our opinion, the use of
spreadsheets, list serves and multiple databases to manage a value analysis
team’s activities is actually holding back dramatic advances in any and all
value analysis team’s productivity and performance.
I know this is a bold statement, so let me give you some proof. For years we
audited new clients’ value analysis team’s performance and productivity by
first reading their agendas, minutes and savings reports (on line or off
line) for at least a year, only to discover that there was very little
documentation to prove our client’s claims that they saved money. Even if
the client was using spreadsheets to document their meetings and successes,
it was hard to follow an audit trail to determine if the savings or activity
actually happened.
Our audits usually resulted in sorting through and analyzing a blizzard of
forms, data and reports that in the end had very little meaning, substance
or credibility. But there was one thing that usually stood out in most of
our audits; there was very little VA activity over a 12-month period by VA
teams that wasn’t redundant, repetitive or counterproductive because no one
could measure and monitor what their VA teams were doing in real-time.
It’s all about accountability, which was lacking with these clients’
value analysis programs!
Fast forward a few years when we started to automate our clients’ value
analysis teams’ activities with our CliniTrack™ Value Analysis Manager and
these undesirable dynamics changed dramatically. First of all, all value
analysis activities (agendas, minutes, meeting attendance, project and
status reports, savings vs. savings goals, etc.,) were reported and then
archived on line in real time for everyone to review. No team leader or team
member could hide, avoid or ignore the activities of their VA teams any
longer. It either happened, or it didn’t -- in real time!
This is the big advantage of an automated value analysis system; all of your
value analysis activities can be measured, monitored and managed with
two-clicks of your mouse. No need to wait days, weeks or even months to see
if your value analysis team(s) tasks and activities are on time, on target
and on budget. All the information that you need to make decisions is right
at your fingertips just waiting to be analyzed, evaluated and acted on.
After researching the challenges that supply chain professionals are
facing, SVAH has developed and now is licensing our new CliniTracK™ Value
Analysis Manager. Our objective with this new software as a service product
line is to provide you with the solutions you have been looking for to the
annoying problems, which we just talked about, as well as to speed up,
simplify and streamline your current value analysis process at your
hospital, system or IDN. It’s just that simple!
We have listed below the primary and secondary features and benefits of our
CliniTrack™ Value Analysis Manager to give you an idea of how it can help
you to quickly organize, document and then capture and control all of the
pertinent details of your value analysis process for new and better savings
results:
1) All of your new purchase requests will be completed on line,
numbered and then automatically directed to the appropriate responsible
party for action. This eliminates the hassle of dealing with the hundreds of
unwieldy and non-uniform (e-mail, fax and phone) new purchase requests that
flow through your supply chain office annually.
2) To insure that your important documents are never lost or
misplaced in your requisition to approval process all relevant data will be
automatically archived in the CliniTracK™ file repository until deemed
appropriate to be removed. This will give you piece of mind that all of the
new clinical and financial data that you require to manage your product
evaluation/VA process will be at your fingertips when you need them.
3) All relevant value analysis team documents will be housed in this
module. It will also contain our proven six-step Value Analysis Funneling™
process to assist your VA team in the evaluation/selection of any and all
products, services or technologies that are requested. All and all, with
this module you will never lose a document or miss a vital step in your
evaluation/VA process.
4) This module will provide your clinical trial team with a
step-by-step process to follow to manage and control all aspects (project
manager, trial location, length, training, cost/benefit analysis, survey
forms, etc.) for your clinical trials. By following this imbedded process we
can almost guarantee you that your clinical trials will be more consistent,
credible and exacting.
5) One of the best features of our CliniTrack™ Value Manager is its
extensive library of proven value analysis best practices, advanced training
materials, forms, checklists, etc. to up you value analysis game. You won’t
find these resources anywhere else in the healthcare marketplace.
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If you are looking for an intuitive, uncomplicated, yet complete system to
manage and control all of your value analysis activities and tasks, this is
the solution for you. It will also ensure that you have complete
documentation (from requisition to approval) to value justify all of your
new purchases: No more lost documents , no more unanswered questions, no
more hassles or loose ends with your product evaluation/value analysis
process. These annoyances will be eliminated forever!
If you are one of the hundreds of supply chain professionals who are
dissatisfied with the time, lost opportunities and complexity of your value
analysis process then you owe it to yourself to opt in to our FREE
CliniTracK™ “test drive” offer to see for yourself if it is the right
solution for you. All you need to do is to complete the short contact form
below to get your “test drive” scheduled.
THE
7 MOST DANGEROUS MYTHS ABOUT PRICE SAVINGS
