As hospitals are facing tougher economic times many have begun extensively looking at their supply chain and GPO's to cut costs, reduce inventories, negotiate better pricing, etc. Using various reports and analytic tools my hospital has begun analyzing our Medlab supply spend by day ,by unit, and by GL account to see whether or not we are trending above or below budget. If we see any outstanding outliers in expense, products, units, GL spreads, etc we can address them and fix them as soon as we see them.
A hospitals supply chain can often have a quarter million dollars of transactions on a daily basis. One of the difficulties we are facing is correlating our supply spend to other health care metrics. We may be trending under our projected budget but we do not know if it because we are seeing a reduced census, less inpatients, a lower CMI, or maybe we are just being more efficient with our supplies? We want to be able tell what the reason is for being under of over budget.
Common metrics that are benchmarked and used at months end are Patient adjusted days and cost per discharge but what do hospitals do to analyze their supply chain metrics on a daily or weekly basis?
Any comments or suggestions would be appreciated.