Johns Hopkins Healthcare in Baltimore created a system-wide supply chain infrastructure in order to help increase scale, according to Healthcare Finance.
Here are five things to know:
1. The health system joined a group purchasing organization to leverage the concomitant strength in numbers and to feel out vendors to negotiate the best possible prices for various products. This became the Hopkins Supply Chain Initiative.
2. Clinicians historically haven't been overly involved in supply chain or value analysis, but that trend is shifting, particularly as health systems become larger, with physicians now serving on many value analysis teams.
3. A recent study by Procured Health that polled 101 electrophysiologists and orthopedic surgeons found that clinicians don't necessarily trust device company representatives when it comes to evaluating their products, and only around 10 percent of physicians reported they were "very satisfied" with their colleagues in the supply chain, including the value analysis coordinator and the supply chain vice president.
4. The chief challenge facing larger-scale supply chain operations is variability.
5. One key strategy in mitigating disruptiveness is identifying the data that would be most useful to physicians.