Increasing Buying Power By Streamlining Operations

Challenge

Today’s clinical engineering environment is increasingly complex. Rising operational costs along with the task of doing more with less adds pressure on hospitals to identify effective strategies to reduce spending. To help identify new strategies to support his objectives, Blake Collins, Clinical Engineering Director of ChristianaCare Health System, consulted with industry experts.

Solution

The recommendation was to assess current suppliers in an effort to evaluate effective business partners and streamline the procurement process for his 33-member team of inspectors, biomed technicians and imaging technicians.

“We told the C-suite we would reduce our overall costs and when we did, we showed them the data. In turn, we were able to earn buy-in and approval for additional headcount and can now rely on our own people to turn the wrench.”

Blake Collins Clinical Engineering Director

The recommendation was to assess current suppliers in an effort to evaluate effective business partners and reduce the number of total vendors. At first, the task of consolidating vendors appears simple: reduce the current number of suppliers to extract the greatest cost savings and gain increased service level performance. However, the process of consolidating vendors and instituting a revised model by which to optimize them is complex, time consuming and at times, very tedious.

“The effort to consolidate a large base of suppliers is accompanied by an extensive amount of contracts to sort through, multiple vendor relationships to identify and numerous performance metrics to quantify current performance,” said Collins.

To overcome the inherent challenges of vendor consolidation and realize the gains of improved partnerships with his supplier base, ChristianaCare partnered with PartsSource to implement the PartsSource Pro program, which includes a vendor management model designed to evaluate and qualify suppliers.

“We were able to eliminate this daunting task when we partnered with PartsSource,” said Collins. ChristianaCare also selected PartsSource Pro for its integration capabilities with their asset management application, Connectiv, and data analytics and reporting tools. Collins helped reduce his department’s operational costs by implementing a purchasing strategy that increased buying power and reduced purchase price. Taking a step further, simplifying and automating interactions with preferred suppliers help his team effectively work these relationships beyond cost savings to include support for more strategic initiatives regarding sustainability, innovation, risk reduction and other key objectives.