One of the biggest challenges supply chain and value analysis professionals have voiced related to supply utilization management is convincing their clinical department heads and managers that they indeed have one or more utilization misalignments (i.e., waste and inefficient consumption, misuse, misapplication, or value mismatches in their supply streams) that need to be addressed.
THEIR TACTIC: Confuse the Issue with Extraneous Excuses
This is because most clinical department heads and managers will opine, feel, or guess why anomalies are being observed in their data and then never take action to eliminate these irregularities. They would instead confuse the issue at hand with extraneous excuses, such as:
- Our census is up in this period, that’s what is causing this problem.
- New doctors with new products just came on board during this time frame.
- A new procedure/modality was implemented during this quarter.
Too often, supply chain and value analysis professionals will walk away from these discussions when they hear these excuses without challenging their clinical department heads and managers’ opinions, feelings, and guesses. This isn’t the time to walk away, it’s time to make sure your data speaks louder than others’ weak excuses.
Make Sure Your Data Speaks Louder than Others’ Weak Excuses
We are now working with a hospital executive to present our audit findings to a number of his clinical department heads and managers on millions of dollars of supply utilization misalignments that had surfaced during an extensive audit of their corporation’s indirect purchases. More importantly, this executive wisely has challenged us to make sure that we have adjusted our metrics to reflect his department’s caseload, census, seasonal spikes, etc., to ensure that our data is pristine when meeting with his clinical department heads and managers. This way, every excuse his clinical department heads and managers bring up can be refuted with hard evidence that the data has been adjusted for these one-time, seasonal, or quarterly occurrences that they think is skewing their data.
Quarter-Over-Quarter and Year-Over-Year FY Data is Even Better
To smooth out any and all anomalies in a hospital, system, or IDN’s data we are now providing some of our clients with quarter-over-quarter and year-over-year fiscal year data on their utilization misalignments. This strategy generally removes any and all unique department occurrence (see list of excuses above) during any given fiscal year. You can do the same, thereby, eliminating any and all excuses that your clinical department heads and managers dream up.
Every Assumption Should Be Investigated
When all else fails, you must convince your management to apply a little professional pressure on unwilling department heads and managers to investigate any and all utilization misalignments that have been identified in their department. Why? The chances are that what your clinical department head or manager believes is skewing their data is really a savings opportunity. So to be doubly sure this isn’t a false positive, it needs to be investigated. Don’t let anyone convince you otherwise or you will be leaving millions of dollars of savings on the table – untouched!