Late last year, I penned a post for Becker’s Hospital Review that reflects the challenges facing our hospital clients. Hospital leaders, now more than ever, have a critical need to attack the many hidden cost inefficiencies lurking in their organizations. The medical equipment lifecycle remains one of the key untapped areas of cost savings, but how do these hospitals go about tackling it? By taking a Benchmarking 2.0® approach. Read the original post here and I’ve also included an excerpt below.
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The medical equipment lifecycle (MELC) – all the activities related to the purchase, service, and disposition of medical equipment and technology – presents some of the most complex and murky challenges for hospitals trying to reduce their spending. Due to a lack of accurate information, internal resources, bandwidth, and specialized expertise, even the most diligent hospitals are missing savings of as much as 12-16% of their entire MELC costs – or $12,000 per bed per year. That’s why we at Miga Solutions have developed a methodology that directly attacks these cost inefficiencies in the medical equipment lifecycle. We call it Benchmarking 2.0® and it has two simple concepts at its core: Know the Right Price and Get the Right Price.
Know the Right Price
In order to make smarter, more confident buying decisions, you need the most complete, currently updated, and relevant information available. You need a robust database of sources, models, and manufacturers at your fingertips; information not just on new equipment but also on used equipment, service contracts, repair costs, and trade-ins. The first-generation services you’re likely using rely mainly on hospital-reported data, which is both a tiny slice of the most relevant, actionable data and almost always fails to capture the truly best prices available in the market. A deeper, more nuanced well of information is the pricing data and insights hospitals need to know the right price.
Get the Right Price
Knowing the right price doesn’t mean much if you can’t actually get that price from a supplier. First-generation solutions don’t provide information and support services across the entire lifecycle that are critical to actually realizing the best possible price. This is one of the most important and unique aspects of the Benchmarking 2.0® methodology – combining accurate and comprehensive pricing data with expert and specialized services required to get the results you need. When your benchmarking provider also helps with acquisition, finding service options, and donating and recycling equipment, they go beyond being just a pricing resource. Their myriad connections across the marketplace mean easier access to the most qualified suppliers, unbiased expert negotiation support, and experienced insights into purchasing strategies, service contract management and disposition solutions that you may not have access to.
