ASCs should "test the market" to save supply chain costs, said Director Rob Austin, Senior Consultant Don Baverman and Senior Consultant Marissa Burik of Navigant Consulting, a healthcare consulting firm.
They shared the following tip with Becker's ASC Review:
Almost everyone involved with purchasing for ASCs utilizes distributors and group purchasing organizations. There are distributors for medical-surgical products, for pharmaceuticals and even for facilities supplies such as paper products and office supplies. Furthermore, non-acute medical facilities have a variety of choices around how to utilize GPO contracts: there are pharma-specific GPO consortiums, ASC-based purchasing groups and offshoots from the major national acute care-focused GPOs which offer specific contracting opportunities for physician practices, surgery centers and other ambulatory settings.
Most of these distributions and purchasing aggregation options are valuable and beneficial to those doing the supplies purchasing for ASCs. These distributors and GPOs offer lower prices, ease of ordering and additional services to support the supply chain function. What those who lead purchasing efforts should keep in mind about both distributors and GPOs, however, is that there are a number of options available. Moreover, you should frequently bid out these services in order to make sure you are getting the most market-competitive pricing for these crucial supply chain facilitators.
Many distribution contracts last for three years or longer, but if an ASC hasn't "tested the market" in the last 12 months, then we suggest they do. Pricing has been consistently going down for both healthcare distribution and for GPO services, as awareness of healthcare supply costs continues to grow. The keys are to make sure an ASC has a comprehensive list of potential providers included in your request for proposal and also that you have clearly specified the services you need — delineating also services that you do not want or need.
Even if you don’t switch service providers through an RFP process, incumbent providers are frequently willing to rewrite better terms of contracts early based on threat of moving to another provider or in exchange for an extension of contract length.