A Data-Driven Solution to Streamline the HTM Procurement Process

Challenge

Many healthcare organizations still manage the procurement of parts and services for medical equipment as if automation and analytics had never been invented. They rely on their technicians to call around for the best price, make instinctive decisions about the quality of parts and equipment, and use paper requisitions to create orders that still get faxed to suppliers. This antiquated process was how orders used to be placed at Marshfield Clinic Health System (MCHS) – a rapidly growing, integrated health system serving Wisconsin with nine hospitals, more than 1,200 providers comprising 86 specialties, a health plan, and a healthcare technology management (HTM) department that manages over 30,000 pieces of equipment.

“One of the biggest pain points for biomed technicians is being able to easily and quickly get the parts that are needed to fix equipment,” said Jay Olson, System Biomed Director for MCHS. Olson, who has worked in biomed 23 years and as part of leadership teams for 18 years, noted that the old process lacked order confirmation and tracking, so orders often were never actually placed.

“I don’t know how we could have supported the growth we have had without the integrated process and platform from PartsSource. Every time I turn around there’s always some new benefit as a result of using PartsSource. If people are struggling the way we were, PartsSource PRO is the answer. We couldn’t ask for a better solution.”

Jay Olson System Biomed Director

“A lot of hospitals are still relying on their biomed technicians to shop around to find any ‘deals’ on parts and repairs. Then they manually enter purchased part numbers into the CMMS and hope that it was done correctly. This process can cause significant problems, not only because of the opportunity for human error, but also because it doesn’t make the best use of a technician’s time.”

That is why MCHS turned to PartsSource for an automated purchasing platform to modernize their procurement process and drive better quality and efficiency. The health system implemented PartsSource PRO® clinical resource management solution in June 2018 when MCHS consisted of just three hospitals, with 8,000 pieces of equipment managed by the HTM department.

Solution

PartsSource PRO is designed to increase the availability and quality of patient care through evidence-based decision support for the purchasing of medical equipment parts and services. The service is powered by PRECISION Procurement®, a proprietary digital technology that analyzes millions of data points to give HTM technicians instant access to the highest quality clinical resources at the point of purchase through the platform. As a result, PartsSource PRO maximizes medical equipment uptime, increases productivity and reduces cost, resulting in top-quartile performance for HTM teams in over 1,200 hospitals across the U.S.

One of the key factors driving MCHS’s selection of PartsSource was that it easily integrates with MCHS’s Accruent CMMS. This is important because when material information is consistently and correctly fed back into the CMMS it results in better access to data that drives capital replacement strategy, AEM schedules and total cost of ownership. “The PartsSource platform’s integration with our CMMS is priceless for our efficiency,” said Olson. “And from a safety standpoint, if there is a recall, we can actually determine where a part is.”

He added, “PartsSource enables us to make smart decisions, like having the instant comparison to either purchase a $300 part vs. sending the equipment out to PartsSource (depot repair) for a $150 flat repair rate – that’s a no brainer. After just one quarter, we saw an immediate cost savings of 35%.”

Results

Over the course of their contract, MCHS’s use of PartsSource saved the organization $1.2 million. PartsSource accomplished this by consolidating parts procurement from 471 different OEMs and suppliers to one easy-to-use curated e-commerce platform integrating with CMMS and purchasing workflows. PRECISION Procurement, the platform’s data driven decision support technology reduced MCHS’s previous, significant return rate on defective replacement/ repair parts for medical equipment. While PartsSource PRO’s advanced analytics tools provided visibility into spend and the team’s purchasing behavior, enabling for the first time true data-driven decisions for planning and cost control.

Moreover, PartsSource has eliminated significant waste in the procurement process, bypassing at least three steps and alleviating the burden of purchase order management. As a result, technicians saved an average of 47 minutes per order on 3,588 orders in 2019, a savings valued at over $87,000 in labor costs alone.

“We couldn’t have asked for a better solution.”

Jay Olson System Biomed Director