HCPro.com: Hospital Materials Management

Hospital Materials Management provides timely market news and detailed reports on hospital and group purchasing trends and practices across the country.

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July 2008 (Volume 33, Issue 7)	view entire issue

Oil, food prices threaten hospital supply budgets
It doesn't take much more than a pit stop at your local gas station and a quick sweep around your local supermarket to get a vivid, painful reminder that prices of gas and food have soared to near-inflationary levels. But visit a hospital, and the evidence of rising food and fuel costs is far less apparent. However, that doesn't mean that hospitals aren't being affected: As the price of oil and staples such as rice, corn, and eggs increase, the price of thousands of petroleum-based medical products, coupled with higher food and transportation costs, form a one-two punch that could put a big dent in your hospital supply budget. In fact, food was dubbed "the new gold" in a recent report in The Washington Post.

Five ways your distributor can work for you
Times are certainly tough for today’s hospitals. Operating margins vary, and certain categories perform better than others, but no one has it easy. Supply chain executives face unrelenting pressure to reduce costs that have already been squeezed, find cheaper products that are already cheaper than the ones they replaced, pay less for contract services, and, of course, run their operation more efficiently. For many veterans, this isn’t the same patient- and clinician-centered environment they experienced years ago.

Hard data drives pursuit of value analysis savings
If it were easy to thoroughly investigate savings opportunities through value analysis, anybody could do it. But the reality is that it isn't as easy as it looks. In your value analysis study, you must patiently, persistently, and systematically explore how the targeted product, service, or technology is being used to discover the root causes of your utilization misalignments (i.e., the wasteful or inefficient consumption, misuse, misapplication, or mismatches of your products, services, and technologies). This exploratory phase of value analysis begins and ends with hard data.

Other recently-published articles from Hospital Materials Management:

Sterile processing comes out clean as complement to successful materials management

Big orthopedic settlement could swing pricing pendulum toward hospitals

Supply chain salaries rise with responsibilities

Hard data drives pursuit of value analysis savings

Five ways your distributor can work for you

Oil, food prices threaten hospital supply budgets

Oil costs can cause your expenses to slip out of control

Four more tips to reduce orthopedic implant costs and keep physicians happy

Use value analysis analytics to identify your best candidates

Study: Product superiority is top decision criteria for purchases of movable capital equipment

Five tips to control orthopedic implant costs

Passing the torch: Prepare today for tomorrow

Development of anti-infective, specialized devices likely to influence future of Foley catheters

Seven procedures for a successful, long-lasting reprocessing program

More choices don’t make value analysis decisions better

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