Eight Tales of the Healthcare Supply Chain

In honor of National Supply Chain Week, we assembled this collection of eight real stories from the healthcare supply chain trenches. With the advice, lessons and insights, you’ll find something that relates to your biggest sourcing challenges.

• Contracting leverage
• Product standardization
• Clinician engagement
• Data management

There are all kinds of supply chains serving the healthcare marketplace, and we work daily with many of them in organizations like these.

• Regional Purchasing Collaboratives
• Academic Medical Centers 
• Large Nonprofit Healthcare Systems
• Community-Based Healthcare Systems
• Not-for-Profit Regional Medical Centers
• Large, Integrated Health Systems 
• Not-for-Profit Parent of Integrated Health Networks

Is your type of healthcare organization represented on this list? Read on to learn how your supply chain peers deal with medical device data, contracting, standardization and more.

Eight Case Studies for Healthcare Supply Chain Leaders

#1 Regional Purchasing Collaborative Supply Chain
Transform Member Data Management for Contract Savings

Want more medical device contract savings? Try the strategies used by this regional purchasing collaborative (RPC). Its member organizations include ten hospitals and 60+ healthcare facilities across three states. 

This story explains how the RPC tackled the challenge of consolidating purchasing data from multiple sources and transformed member data management. The RPC needed help in terms of market research, vendor vetting, opportunity identification, competitive RFPs and new contracts. 

Curvo eased their data collection pain points by aggregating purchasing data from the different health systems, removing that burden from the stretched RPC team. Curvo professionals also normalized data and added enrichments. 

Data visualizations smoothed the way for RPC leaders and analysts to work on projects internally and share aggregated information across the collaboration. The RPC team could analyze purchase and pricing patterns against a national market and directly by member. 

Download this case study to explore how the RPC leveraged Curvo Data-as-a-Service to:

• Streamline market research
• Enhance vendor vetting
• Identify new opportunities
• Build contract portfolio 
• Conduct competitive RFPs
• Secure lucrative contracts

Take action now to start uncovering your own contract savings.

#2 Academic Medical Center Supply Chain
Loma Linda Adopts Data-Driven Spend Management

Why did Loma Linda University Health choose data-driven clinical spend management? Read this case study to learn how data enrichment and a spend management platform fueled their sourcing transformation.

When Loma Linda University Health launched digital transformation in clinical spend management, they already faced a number of headwinds. 

• Needed to expand sourcing options with multilevel contracts and alternative secondary suppliers. 
• Limited ability to match items without vendor assistance, needed something more dynamic than their GPO tools. 
• Wanted to proactively pursue high-potential savings opportunities across categories.
• Wanted to share dashboard stories for quick insights, presentations and collaboration. 
• More contract visibility and compliance monitoring were essential. 

The academic medical center partnered with Curvo to launch a digital spend management strategy. Curvo worked closely with supply chain management and value analysis teams to review current and future states and understand organizational needs. The implementation was completed well within the 120-day goal. During that time, Loma Linda transferred 2.28 million rows and 950MB of PO history and contract data to Curvo for enrichment.

With data and analytics, the hospital overcame spend management limitations and took strategic sourcing to the next level, gaining serious benefits in the process:

• Clinical spend data to identify savings opportunities
• Current-state assessment of surgical supply chain
• Pricing strategies aligned with organization goals
• Analytics to share persuasive stories with physicians
• Better pricing and compliance in medical device contracting

Get the full story and share the ideas with your sourcing team.

#3 Large, Nonprofit Healthcare System Supply Chain
How One Contract Redefined Clinical Spend Management

One large healthcare system successfully launched sourcing transformation with a single joint contract. The faith-based nonprofit serves over 80 communities from 400+ sites on the West Coast and in Hawaii, with a team of 37,000 employees, physicians, health professionals and volunteers.

Collectively, the physicians do thousands of joint procedures, representing millions in implant spend. When the health system needed to renew a significant hip joint contract, it lacked bandwidth for data and analysis to gain more negotiating leverage. 

For the supply chain director, analysts and others, the most important thing in contract renewal was to have their facts straight about medical device parts. This meant starting with a clean item master. The solution: an external strategic sourcing expert using enriched data and an end-to-end spend management platform. 

With cleansed data, the supply chain team had visibility into insights like:

• Dollar value of hardware per case or hip as a total hip
• Average cost for given construct or hip as grouping of supplies
• Color coding to represent suppliers and their share of utilization

The supply chain team realized significant value from the sourcing transformation:

• Greater entity response within system
• Productive physician engagement
• Leverage with supplier community
• Tighter contracts 

Get the case study, then pick one contract to start your own sourcing transformation.

#4 Large, Not-for-Profit Health System Supply Chain
Data-Driven Spend Management Drives Physician Engagement

Outdated spend management and lack of visibility held back this $1B+ not-for-profit health system. Now they’re a model of productive, data-driven physician engagement. Learn from the experience of this large organization and see how Curvo Data Enrichment contributed to their success.

The health system was ready to be more strategic with clinical spend management and knew it had to begin with their data. They believed there was hidden value waiting to be unleashed for clinicians, administrators and the supply chain. 

Curvo Data-as-a-Service (DaaS) was the “secret sauce” that gave the supply chain team its power. Healthcare networks now get clear views into financial performance. Clinicians engage in dashboard exploration sessions, and trusted information and physician engagement result in savings. 

“The enriched data is great, but you have to also build in some sort of platform for how you’re going to use it and the questions you want to ask, because without all these filters and other capabilities, I couldn’t get answers very quickly,” said a senior operations consultant on the hospital’s process improvement team. “The old way, I’d have to filter out by GICs in a big Excel spreadsheet and look for anomalies. It was very difficult.” 

Read the case study, then start planning your own data-driven spend management strategy.  

#5 Community-Based Healthcare System Supply Chain
Monument Saves $1.2 Million Annually Across Four Categories

Monument Health offers 31 medical specialties in 38 clinics and five hospitals in 12 communities across South Dakota’s western regions. The health system had separate vendors for four major orthopedic product categories – total joints, spine, trauma and sports medicine – but wanted to explore cost-saving options like supplier consolidation and conversion. 

Estimating volume shifts and associated savings across multiple suppliers in each category involved extensive analytics, but with his team already stretched thin, the Supply Chain VP lacked resources for the labor-intensive task. The project would also have to be completed quickly – but with a total of nine suppliers across the four complicated categories, it could take as much as a year to complete without help. 

The VP of Supply Chain partnered with the Medical Director at Monument Health to engage the orthopedic surgeons, and were successful in convincing them to consider supplier consolidation. With one obstacle cleared, Monument could then request bids at an 80% commitment in each category. 

Download this case study to learn how Monument Health overcame obstacles and saved $1.2 million annually across four orthopedic product categories.

#6 Not-for-Profit Regional Medical Center Supply Chain
Optimizing Sourcing with Benchmarking Leads to $750,000 Savings

A not-for-profit regional medical center serves parts of North and South Carolina as a teaching hospital, referral center, and Level 2 Trauma Center. As part of ongoing transformation, the medical center implemented a new approach to pricing strategy to compare and benchmark prices for total joint sourcing. As a result, the organization saw $750,000 in annual savings in the total joints category. 

To enable the new strategy, the medical center used the Curvo spend management platform, which allowed them to easily compare and benchmark prices. Previously, they would have used a construct approach for an orthopedic joint RFP like this one. However, the sourcing team wanted to adopt a line-item approach to improve efficiency and performance.

In this story, Curvo worked with hospital leadership, surgeons and others to ensure the organization got the most competitive price from vendors. Using the platform and sourcing analytics, the team came up with multiple constructs and set informed price points. 

With pricing visibility, the Director of Materials Management and surgeons can now have an open dialogue and ensure contracts for the best product at the best price. Read this case study for ideas for your benchmarking strategy.

#7 Large, Integrated Health System Supply Chain
$1.1M Savings in Interventional Cardiology and Peripheral Vascular

A large, integrated health system in the Northern Plains brings a range of medical specialties to the community, including interventional cardiology and peripheral vascular. As costs continue to rise, the Vice President of Supply Chain saw savings opportunities within the sourcing function. 

However, despite paying for an incumbent's legacy software, the VP still couldn’t get clear, strong data to make a case. There was too much manual work involved. That led to a pilot with Curvo software and data. 

The Supply Chain VP targeted the two categories – interventional cardiology and peripheral vascular – with the goal of potential savings of $500k in the two categories combined. Curvo software helped build models with benchmark pricing and negotiation scenarios, along with cost-savings visualizations to share with physicians. 

“During our initial pilot with Curvo, we were able to see clear, data-rich visualizations of our savings potential. No longer were we at the mercy of our vendors,” explained one stakeholder. “Curvo’s powerful software allowed each of our departments to see how they could take ownership of savings opportunities.”

In just seven months, the Integrated Health System blew past their savings goals, reaching $1.1M in savings across the two categories –  an increase of 30% above goal and over double what the VP initially estimated.

“Going into our pilot with Curvo, I had high hopes, but the savings outcome of $1.1M across just two business units was far greater than I or any of the stakeholders could have ever imagined. We not only doubled our savings goal, but we found a true partner in the process,” declared the vice president of the integrated health system supply chain.

Read this case study for ideas to supercharge your own sourcing savings.

#8 Not-for-Profit Parent of Integrated Health Network Supply Chain
Data Insights Lead to Pricing and Clinician Alignment in Just 90 Days

Read this independent, third-party interview with the Director of Supply Chain Services and the Value Analysis Coordinator at Carle Foundation Hospital. Carle Foundation is the not-for-profit parent company of an integrated network of healthcare services.

The Director of Strategic Sourcing oversees a complex supply chain and depends on physician buy-in for success with orthopedics and medical device contracts. This is the story of how – in just 90 days – Curvo sourcing experts managed data analytics, pricing recommendations and supplier negotiations, and facilitated physician alignment for Carle Health. Now the health network wins necessary physician alignment with compelling data insights.

Curvo also eliminates the laborious manual work that typically goes into medical device contracts, while providing useful data benchmarks and visualizations. Get the case study to see how data and analysis came together for impressive results.

• Overcame physician doubts
• Found $840,000 in total annual savings
• Top decile pricing for two projects
• 5X ROI in first nine months

“We wanted to analyze the data and categorize the spend, so we could see where the opportunities were,” explained the Director. “We didn’t even think of some of the potential cost savings that Curvo showed us.” Smaller projects can add up, she noted, and “with Curvo, now I feel I always have an opportunity. They want to find product categories that nobody thinks about.

Download this case study to learn how benchmarking contributed to outstanding sourcing success.

Did you see your type of healthcare organization represented on this list? If reading this case study collection has you wishing for your own sourcing successes, let’s start writing your story.