The next installment of HealthData.gov’s blog post series highlighting applications that have been developed leveraging U.S. Department of Health and Human Services data features Procured Health.
Below is a guest post by the Eric Meizlish, COO & Co-founder of Procured Health.
Procured Health sees the dire fiscal position of our nation’s healthcare system as a call for action. The average non-profit hospital clings to low-single-digit operating margins, and more than one-quarter of hospitals operate in the red. As a result, budgets for capital improvements have dried up and many care providers have no choice but to put themselves up for sale or risk closing their doors for good. And, the worst is yet to come. With impending reimbursement reform, the economic sustainability of many hospitals is in doubt. Both Moody’s and Standard & Poor’s, the credit rating agencies, report a negative financial outlook for hospitals, and McKinsey & Company, the global management consulting firm, forecasts that average hospital margins are likely to halve by the end of the decade. Reducing the cost of care is the only option for many of our nation’s care providers if they hope to stay afloat.
Senior leadership of provider organizations across the country is well aware of this problem, and they are taking preliminary steps to prepare themselves for the future. Both not-for-profit hospital mergers and the level of physician employment have accelerated in the past two years as a result. However, this alone is insufficient to improve fiscal health. To drive the most meaningful savings, providers must strategically coordinate, centralize, and manage their operations on a system-wide basis. Considering the impotence of legacy processes and management systems, this poses a substantial challenge.
Procured Health is tackling this issue head-on with web applications designed to drive savings for hospitals. Our initial product focuses on medical supplies and devices, which consume nearly 15% of a hospital’s net patient revenues. In order to mitigate this burden, we’ve created an “intelligent” product evaluation workflow solution that improves the efficiency and efficacy of product analysis. The platform digitally replicates the evaluation process, including request delivery, project compilation, and committee meeting management and delivers valuable product information to stakeholders within the context of the workflow (hence the “intelligent” moniker). This serves as a catalyst for the adoption of higher-value products and helps to enable system-wide collaboration for greater purchasing leverage over suppliers.
So, when a clinician requests a new technology, supply chain is able to evaluate it side-by-side with comparable products from a variety of vendors. This transforms the product analysis effort from an administrative function to a powerful strategic asset. And, since we conduct fundamental product research, providers can drive standardization without burdening their already limited supply chain resources. Our internal research process incorporates data from a wide variety of sources including academia, suppliers, and hospitals themselves, but none more prominently than the FDA and HHS. Thanks to filing information, the MAUDE database, and a comprehensive directory of recalls, we can provide product analytics that healthcare providers need to choose their supplies. And, with help from the FDA categorization and substantial equivalence schema, our proprietary “related products” algorithm can drive greater competition among suppliers, directly leading to lower prices for our users. It’s clear that greater transparency and greater choices lead directly to greater savings.
For hospitals, more so than ever, the health of their patient population depends on the health of their business. And control over input costs is essential to maintaining a viable and sustainable operation. We understand that healthcare providers across the country are fighting this battle on a daily basis. To learn more about how we can help or to request a demo of our services, please visit www.procuredhealth.com or email us at info@procuredhealth.com.
Add new comment