A recent survey of hospital leaders involved in supply chain management (SCM) has found that 87 percent of hospital leaders believe supply chain management can improve margins by more than 1% and 86% believe it can improve care quality. Conducted by Sage Growth Partners on behalf of Syft, a national provider of inventory control and end-to-end supply chain cost management software and services, the results also show that almost 50% of respondents admitted to using manual processes (e.g., spreadsheets) along with a variety of different SCM approaches such as in-house solutions (39%), their EHR (16%), a third-party solution (19%), and outside consultants (7%). A surprising two in five admitted to not analyzing their supply chain at all.
Three-quarters of respondents report using their SCM solutions for basic analytic functions such as tracking inventory (76%) or consolidating suppliers (71%).
The ability for current solutions to perform more advanced functions were less frequently cited: accessing data on case cost in the OR (57%), identifying and managing expired supplies (50%), surgeon supply use variance (42%), other (3%).
In the OR, many are using low-tech approaches to analytics and resistance to change is the top barrier. Specific to operation room (OR) procedures, 37% use Excel or other Microsoft tools to track margins per case. Twenty-seven percent use other low-tech tools, don’t know if they track OR margins, or do not track those margins. Thirty-six percent use a specific technology solution to track OR margins.
Surgeon allegiances to vendors/supplies was cited as the top barrier to reducing supply chain waste in the OR. Other barriers included: clinical staff lacking time to consider supplies pre-and post-procedure (No. 2), missing the right technology or workflows (No. 3), and staff resistance to change (No. 4).
Interestingly, almost every respondent said SCM is a medium (33%) or high (65%) priority, yet only 13 percent named it as their highest operational investment priority. The top operational investment priorities for 2019 were identified as:
- patient throughput (24%)
- process improvement (21%)
- perioperative environment (15%)
- staffing turnover, retention, and management (15%)
- SCM (13%)
- other (12%)
The majority (86%) believe improving SCM would improve care quality, however, 27% say their hospital has not yet used SCM data analytics to identify ways to improve quality. Almost all respondents (98%) say better SCM can improve hospital margins, with 52 percent believing that better SCM can increase margins by 1% to 3% and 35% suggesting improvements in SCM would increase margins by more than 3 %. Sixty-three percent also felt there is a clear ROI for supply chain analytics with 97% believing that supply chain analytics can positively impact their organizations’ costs. Respondents also said supply chain analytics can positively impact value-based care (67%), quality (60%), staff satisfaction/retention (45%), patient outcomes (43%), and regulatory adherence (37%).
