As procurement professionals, our task every day is to create efficiencies and best practices when it comes to procuring the supplies and services that are essential to our end-users. Three trends that are burgeoning right now are green procurement, auction procurement, and capital planning procurement. The focus will be on the latter in our discussion, but first I will take some time to briefly describe the other two trends: We’re entering a new era in corporate renewable energy purchasing (Pyper, 2017). Green purchasing has become more popular within corporation and governments. Sixty percent of government purchasers have a formal or informal green purchasing policy in place (Case, 2014). Now that global warming is being taken more …show more content…
The first trend is a greater focus on patient safety and satisfaction. UVA Health System is beginning to integrate bidirectional communications into newly deployed infusion pumps to enhance patient safety (Vockley, 2016). Equipment can be upgraded to be safer, such as a CT scanner’s ability to detect radiation exposure to prevent overdosing the patient. Conducting patient surveys can offer hospitals a view into the perception and overall satisfaction of their treatment. The second trend is a growing attention to the healthcare ecosystem. Purchases must be made with foresight and preplanning and equipment and services should be compatible with all other or most of the other equipment and services currently in use. This will cut down on redundancies, for example, one could buy a specific Ultrasound machine and exclusively use that instrument model for all or most of the hospital. This will save costs in ordering accessories, dyes and …show more content…
Knowing the life cycle of your equipment, warranties, and service coverages allows a hospital or organization to plan ahead with procurement about future needs and they can budget for those needs. Some hospitals also project their healthcare technology needs further into the future, based on their plans to offer new clinical services or serve different patient populations (Vockley, 2016). This trend runs counter to some current philosophies of knowing a fixed budget, then slicing up that pie to various departments who needs to make do with what is
Healthcare organizations must inhere a strategy to stay ahead of their competitors so that they can maintain their patient volume. By measuring the quality of care through performance, patient satisfaction, and experience, and cost all play a role of having patients to choose your hospital. Today, many healthcare organizations have adopted the triple aim strategy of great quality, great patient experience for a reasonable cost. With the tracking of their patient experience and continuously improving the quality of care at a reasonable cost to stay one step ahead of their competitors and to maintain and increase patient volume has been successful help in the healthcare
Patient satisfaction surveys have been in debate being that the concept of ‘patient satisfaction’ is not clear and because this term means something different to everyone (Junewicz & Youngner, 2015). However, Junewicz and Younger (2015) discuss how these surveys can improve aspects of a patient’s care such as humanism, communication, safety, and confidentiality. The part that is still not covered is that these aspects patient satisfaction has no clear relationship with the technical quality of healthcare such as nosocomial infections, surgical complications, and readmission rates (Junewicz & Youngner, 2015).
When assessing where the industry will go over the next ten years, there is one area that stands out. Government involvement in healthcare has become a major player in how this industry is changing. New regulations are being introduced at a rapid rate and have pushed hospitals into constant change management (Arab Kash, Spaulding, Johnson, & Gamm, 2014).
With consolidation among hospital systems over the last few years there has been a trend toward ways to streamline processes. By having “shared services” such as laundry services, human resources and radiology and diagnostic services it’s possible to lower costs and have common processes. The advent of health care reform and the Affordable Care Act (ACA) with its Information Technology (IT) incentives has led to greater interest in risk management and IT solutions. While there was a decrease in 2012 on outsourcing IT services the finalization by the Supreme Court of the ACA and President Obama’s re-election cemented the need for an IT solution (Kutscher, 2012)
increases in patient satisfaction, which in a hospital setting is important not only for our
In the health care industry today, it would be challenging to live in a world without technology. Technology has become a major part of
ABSTRACT Technology affects society in every aspect in today’s world. There is not one single industry that has not been affected by technology, but no other industry is more affected than the field of medicine and healthcare. Modern technology has changed the structure and organization of the medical field. With rising health care cost the amount of uninsured people keeps rising higher and higher. With new technology the prices will only continue to rise. There are currently approximately 46 million people without health care coverage and that number continues to climb with rising health care cost. Employers are either no longer able to pay for employee insurance because of the 54 percent cost increase, or they are having to change policies
Patients expect instant response to call lights due to today’s technological advancements. This can negatively impact nurse stress and cause contempt toward the patient. However, the expectation to respond promptly improves safety and encourages frequent rounding. Also, aiming for high patient satisfaction scores on the HCAHPS/Press Ganey by fulfilling patient requests can overshadow safe, efficient, and necessary healthcare. Although patient satisfaction is important, ultimately, the patient’s health takes precedence over satisfying patient and family requests, especially when those requests are unnecessary, harmful, or take away from the plan of care (Junewicz & Youngner, 2015). The HCAHPS/Press Ganey survey focuses on the patient’s perception of care. The problem with this aspect of the survey is that the first and foremost goal of nurses should not be to increase a patient’s score based on perception. According to an article in Health Facilities Management, the nurse’s top priority is to provide the safest, most quality care possible for patients with the resources they are given (Hurst, 2013). Once this has been accomplished, the nurse can then help the patient realize that the most
The use of supplies is a problem because we are spending too much money on them. We are a world-renowned hospital with very high-end robots and equipment. Therefore, our surgeons demand the best and the higher valued machines and supplies. Cost and quality need to be considered. We do not want the quality of care for the patients to be jeopardized because of inadequate planning in regards to low quality supplies (Sullivan, 2009).
Predictability means the assurance that their products and services will be the same over time and it all locales. For general out-patient clinics, nurses will ask some st...
reimbursement determinations. As a result, the camaraderie among physicians has developed into a more aggressive approach to impede competition (Shi & Singh, 2012). Little information is shared with patients in regards to procedures or disease control. The subjects are forced to rely on the internet for enlightenment on the scope of their illnesses (Shi & Singh, 2012). Furthermore, the U.S. health care system fails to provide adequate knowledge on billing strategies for operations and other medical practices. The cost in a free system is based on supply and demand and is known in advance of hospital admission (Shi & Singh, 2012). The need for new technology is another characteristic that is of interest when considering the health care system. Technology is often v...
The technology industry is also an industry prone to threats of substitutions. From the consumer products to their healthcare technologies, everything can be taken over by a newer technology or a more efficient
Environmental pressures have caused green supply chain management to emerge as an important corporate environmental strategy for organisations’ processes. Our discussion will describe, illustrate and critically evaluate the purchasing process of Woolworths. It will further identify the steps of the purchasing process, the effect of green purchasing and sustainable purchasing. Moreover, the essay will go on to look at the effort that Woolworths has made through their programmes and initiatives of green purchasing.
Technology is defined as wasteful when considered unsafe and ineffective. This cost containment strategy will help save money without diminishing the quality of care. One of the most recent changes in health care within the last five years is the Affordable Care Act (ACA), or Obama Care. The main goal of the ACA is to make healthcare affordable for all citizens by changing many of the rules set my insurance companies (Snell, 2013). A major issue that contributes to the rising cost of healthcare is the lack of communication among healthcare providers leading to unnecessary repetition of expensive treatments. The ACA has planned to solve this buy establishing the Accountable Care Organization (ACO’s). This will be a group of healthcare providers working together to ensure effective treatment, while limiting the amount of unnecessary tools and test. The goal is to send patients to providers in the same network, with the hope of saving money. Another way the ACA plans to lower cost is by bundling payment systems. The system will provide patients a single payment that will cover all expenses, public and private. This will be extremely beneficial for patients who have chronic illnesses such as, hypertension and diabetes (Snell,
In general, there are different types of procurement type for various situations due to no one method can be suitable under the all different construction project. In this case, there are four procurement paths, which are traditional, design and build, management and design and manage, will be advised to use. However, each method has different aspects of advantages and disadvantages.