Tona Savoie, administrator of Bayou Region Surgical Center, a four-OR facility in Thibodaux, La., explains the facility's use of a full-time purchasing manager, an unusual position for an ambulatory surgery center.
1. Scope of work. The purchasing manager, who has been at Bayou Region for more than three years, oversees both pharmaceutical and surgical supplies. She places orders, takes in deliveries, monitors changing prices, looks for new vendors, discusses needs with physicians and keeps track of volume.
2. How work is usually handled. Before the job was created, Ms. Savoie and several other staffers shared purchasing work. At other ASCs, she says the job is often done part-time by scrub techs. "It's so overwhelming that it's hard for people to do it part-time," Ms. Savoie says. The work with pharmaceuticals is especially challenging. "Most people do not want to touch pharmacy, because you have to count drugs daily and fill out a great deal of paperwork for the narcotics," she says.
3. What sort of person can do this? Bayou Region hired a pharmacy tech from the local hospital. "She learned surgery supplies in six months," Ms. Savoie says. "Now she knows more about that than I do." Someone who does this job must be aggressive about it and work autonomously. "I guess it would be easy to come into this job and do very little," she says. "You have to be willing to get into a number of different areas without a great deal of supervision."
4. Return on investment. The center has not measured return on investment but Ms. Savoie is certain the purchasing manager is well worth her salary. "It used to be that the doctors used this piece of equipment at the hospital, so we're going to use it here," she said. "No one had the time to research it." In some cases, the purchasing manager has found the ASC was paying something like $40 for a product that could be had for less than $10. "She is a godsend," Ms. Savoie says of her purchasing manager.
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