Recently, Global Healthcare Exchange (GHX) announced the winners of its 13th annual GHXcellence Awards, which honor supply chain leaders who have achieved significant savings and efficiencies. Two of the winners shared their success stories with Healthcare Finance News.
[See also: Award recognizes top 10 percent of hospitals for patient satisfaction]
Réginé Honoré Villain, corporate director of supply chain management at the Medical University Hospital Authority (MUHA) in Charleston, S.C., received GHX’s new award this year, the GHXcellence Leadership Award, given to an individual supply chain leader for work in improving the business of healthcare.
[See also: GHX names 'Best 50' healthcare providers for supply chain excellence]
In order to achieve the dual goals of reducing MUHA’s overall supply chain costs and improving the integrity of its item master data in order to provide product data to its multiple clinical and business systems, Honoré Villain worked on a strategic initiative that included staff training and certification, master data management, process automation and end department partnerships. Her work saved MUHA $370,000 related to contract tier and price compliance and more than $1 million in cost avoidance through automation and resolution of supply chain exceptions.
“I think what I’ve done successfully is from the get-go building the basic block of a solid core team so that from the beginning we have buy-in from key stakeholders,” said Honoré Villain.
She added that establishing communication and expectations from the beginning are some of the key ingredients to their success so far, and stressed the importance of measuring.
“Have the metrics to measure yourself so you know where you are and where you want to be,” she said. “Develop key indicators to see how you have been doing.”
Edward Hospital and Health Services, a 345-bed hospital in Naperville, Ill., was given the award for U.S. Healthcare Provider of the Year for a small to mid-sized organization because it achieved nearly $1 million in supply chain savings.
“We didn’t acquire new tools in order to achieve these savings, we just started using them,” said Harold Richards, administrative director of materials management. at Edward Hospital and Health Services. “The problem was not that we needed something else, we were just not using the components of our tools correctly.”
Richards explained that his organization began to fix supply chain discrepancies up front to make less work for everyone at the end.
“This mends our relationship with our accounts payable department who spent a bulk of their time trying to resolve discrepancies,” he said. “The process prior to this was to work on discrepancies on the backside once we were notified of them. Now we have less than 2 percent of the issues the accounts payable department had before.”
Richards added that the changes his organization made not only cut down on supply chain costs but also reduced labor costs due to more efficient processes involving fewer labor hours.
“If we look at reduction in labor costs, we’re talking thousands of dollars because now we’re not wasting efforts due to inefficient processes,” he said.
[See also: Supply chain improvement project yields positive results for Kansas and Missouri hospitals]
Throughtout the year, GHX tracks the top 50 hospitals in supply chain cost performance to narrow down its award winners said Cheryl Flury, spokesperson for GHX.
This year’s other winners were:
- Industry Impact Award Provider: University of Maryland Medical System, Baltimore
- Industry Impact Award Supplier: Cook Medical, Bloomington, Ind.
- #1 IDN from GHX Best 50 List: Virginia Mason Medical Center, Seattle
- U.S. Healthcare Provider of the Year: Large Organization: Fairview Health Services, Minneapolis
- Canadian Healthcare Provider of the Year: Alberta Health Services, Alberta, Canada
- U.S. Healthcare Supplier of the Year: Small to Mid-sized Organization: CareFusion, San Diego
- U.S. Healthcare Supplier of the Year: Large Organization: Owens &Minor, Richmond, Va.
- Canadian Healthcare Supplier of the Year: Bard Canada, Ontario, Canada
- European Union Healthcare Supplier of the Year: Covidien, Dublin, Ireland