by
Linda Comisar, Division Vice President | May 24, 2016
From the May 2016 issue of HealthCare Business News magazine
The benefit of a centralized purchasing group to technicians is that they are now able to devote 100 percent of their bandwidth to performing PMs and repairing equipment. It took a while to build the trust required within the community of technicians, but by hiring buyers with the correct experience and giving them proper training, technicians were exposed to new solutions to help them better accomplish their work without the added stress of not just sourcing parts, but also investing time required for proper expediting and logistics.
Developing an organized approach to strategic sourcing has many benefits in addition to time saved. The potential savings for hospital groups is in the millions. When a finance department independently studied transactions, it was revealed that technicians who manually purchased their own items spent on average 32 percent more than the centralized purchasing group spent across the board. These savings don’t factor in the time spent by the technician sourcing the item. The savings are attributed to economies of scale and leveraging position in the marketplace, along with knowing the correct vendor to utilize, given the dynamics of each situation. Often it is important to source the part from a vendor who also possesses the expertise to install the item. It is in this instance where a centralized procurement group can also be of great assistance in exploiting the developed network to ensure a quality part is installed by the best quality vendor within a certain geographic zone.
Centralized purchasing is a huge opportunity that most hospitals throughout the nation are not taking advantage of. This is low-hanging fruit. The savings generated can far exceed the cost of implementing and operating a centralized purchasing group.
About the author: Linda Comisar serves as division vice president at DOTmed.com. She was formerly the national procurement manager at Catholic Health Initiatives and has over 30 years of experience in supply chain management.Back to HCB News
