Why do supply chain teams turn to a data-driven, platform-based approach for physician preference item (PPI) sourcing? Multiple reasons, as this article will explain:
Accurate, comprehensive data is essential to making the best possible decisions regarding implant contracting strategies in general. With a flexible, data-driven platform, teams are better positioned to leverage typical contracting strategies like these:
But first, let’s look at obstacles that get in the way of PPI sourcing in the first place.
Managing complex PPI master data remains a challenge for healthcare organizations that need the information for contract negotiations and reducing clinical variation. Working with PPI data gets tough and messy fast, and inaccurate or missing information negatively impacts sourcing processes and contract outcomes.
Problems stem from:
Physician Preference Items make up between 40 to 60% of a health system’s supply budget, but clinicians don’t always make their implant choices based on cost. This makes it harder for supply chains to standardize on certain vendors for better pricing. Often compelling data stories provide the only common ground in PPI savings initiatives.
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To appeal to tough clinician audiences, sourcing must manage data about complex medical device categories like the ones below.
When clinicians have strong preferences in these “big ticket” categories, it takes equally strong evidence to convince them to support change and reduce clinical variation. But finding that evidence is a Catch 22 that unprepared supply chains can’t overcome without a digital platform.
When the supply chain team drives sourcing events from a spend management platform, lots of benefits can accrue. This list gives an idea of what to expect from a robust system for PPI sourcing.
The ideal platform for scalable PPI spend management provides an end-to-end environment for engaging healthcare teams, suppliers and clinicians. Multiple solutions and services must be integrated on the platform to create the robust environment healthcare sourcing needs.
Through connected solutions and people, a complete platform environment should support all the functions needed for data-driven PPI sourcing.
There's a lot to consider when evaluating a platform for PPI sourcing, but many sourcing professionals aren’t fully familiar with what’s now possible with platform technology.
Use this list as a guide for what capabilities to expect from a truly comprehensive platform for spend management:
If your solution for PPI sourcing doesn’t match up with this list, it might be worth looking into what Curvo state-of-the-art sourcing and spend management technology can do. Reach out for a demo if you’re ready to take the next step. We’ve also gathered a few more resources to help you and your team better understand this important topic.
Learn about four essential practices in controlling PPI spending:
In addition, the article draws on the story of a large non-profit health system that actually put these best practices to work. An outdated spend management strategy had held the health system back, and the vice president of supply chain was ready for change. Find out what happened next.
Within the supply chain, master data management (MDM) is a critical element of physician preference item sourcing. MDM establishes a single master record for each medical device, compiled from internal and external data sources and applications. The information must be de-duplicated, reconciled and enriched to be a consistent, reliable source of knowledge for other uses. Because of the difficulties in this task, many sourcing teams use the data-driven platform approach described in this article.