Building A
Savings Factory -
Incremental Savings Are Fine, But If You Are Looking For
Breakthrough Triple Digit Savings Results, It’s All About Having A
Cost Management System
Excerpt:
No
corporation in the 21st century can continue to do the
same things and get the same so - so results related to their
cost management efforts without questioning their commitment to
building a “Savings Factory”. To my thinking, only through
massive savings innovations will corporations survive and thrive in
the new millennium. Drip, Drip, Drip isn’t going to make a
dent in your bottom line!
Strategic
Value Analysis: Savings Beyond Price!
The #1 Smart Strategy for Taking
Out Cost in a Healthcare Organization’s Supply Chain
Excerpt:
Most
healthcare organizations’ non-salary expense initiatives are focused on
lowering the price of the products, services and technologies that they
are purchasing, as if this is the only weapon they have in their arsenal
to combat the negative effects of the balanced budget amendment of 1997.
In reality, this is the least potent strategy that can be employed to
dramatically lower their non-salary expenses. Why?
Over the next three to five years
the savings from group purchasing, standardization and prime vendor
contracts will be almost invisible. In fact, supply costs are beginning
to rise because the excess costs are now and will continue to be squeezed
out of your healthcare suppliers’ supply chain. Vendors are screaming
that they have no more price concessions to offer to their healthcare
customers!
“WE CALL THIS THE LAW OF DIMINISHING RETURNS”. Now,
what can we do about it?
Read On
Evolution - Taking Your
Value Management Performance to the Next Level of
Maturity!
Excerpt:
The dynamics of
value management (value analysis and value engineering) in the healthcare
industry has radically changed over the last ten years. We have watched as
healthcare organizations moved from Sole Practitioner to Value Teams
(Value Management Continuum) to determine the relative worth of the
products, services and technology purchases. Yet, with few exceptions,
hospitals and healthcare systems have not reached the superior performance
stage of maturity in this discipline. As value management (VM) matures in
the healthcare industry, the basics need to evolve, thus taking your value
management performance to the next level of maturity. This leap forward
is crucial if your healthcare organizations are going to thrive and
survive in the 21st century.
Read on...
Beyond Benchmarking - Forward to Activity Based Measurement
Excerpt:
Labor management or the measurement and control of
departmental workloads and staffing ratios on a continuous basis is
becoming a priority in healthcare organizations today. When healthcare
organizations consider that their labor cost continue to rise, while at
the same time reimbursement from third parties continues to fall.
Healthcare organizations must dramatically improve and maximize their
management of their labor resources if they are to survive and thrive in
the 21st century. The question that most CEO’s, CFO’s and COO’s are asking today is not when, but how do we put the pieces of the
labor puzzle together to get a real picture of our labor resources, so my
department heads and managers can take action before a crisis arises?
Strategic Value
Analysis: The Process Connection
Excerpt:
With few
exceptions, healthcare organizations are the most complex
enterprises on the face of this earth. They are composed of
interconnected and interdependent parts making up the whole. In the
modern business vernacular, we call these parts processes.
Processes are a systematic series of methods and practices directed
to some end. In our healthcare environment, the end is “wellness” of
the patients we are treating, but how many of these processes
(admissions to discharge) are really of value in our customer’s
eyes? The best measure we have found for determining best value is
the value equation shown in figure 1 (function/cost = value). It has
been our clients’ experience, utilizing THE VALUE EQUATION as their
“best value
test”, that any and all processes can
be reduced by 30% to 40% in complexity. 10% of what is being done
can be eliminated entirely, because it has been found to have NO
VALUE.
Read on