5 Hospital Value Analysis Best Practices?

I received a call last week from a supply chain professional who was reading our October issue of our Savings Beyond Price™ Letter* regarding an article on “Value Analysis Maturity Model: Where do you Stand?” and he wanted to know what were the hospital value analysis best practices that I talked about in this article.

After thinking about an answer to this supply chain professional’s question, I realized this was a tall order since it is dozens of big, small and nuanced value analysis best practices we have learned or observed over the last 25 years that make hospital value analysis teams successful.

So I decided, as a starting point, to answer this question with the 5 uppermost best practices that make hospital value analysis teams hum, prosper and achieve which are as follows:

1. Strategic Planning Driven: Too often, value analysis teams, after  forming, are asked by their senior management to “go save  money” and with little else to guide their way.  This is the worst  advice you could give to a value analysis team since what they  really need is a vision, mission, goals and a plan to really make  savings happen. Consequently, big and sustainable savings won’t  happen if value analysis teams aren’t given a well thought out  strategic value analysis plan to guide their way. 

2. Value analysis Steering Committee: Left to their own devices  value analysis teams will lose their way without the direction,  guidance and timely arbitration of problems that will arise that  are provided by a value analysis steering committee.  The  steering committee membership should be comprised of your hospi- tal’s senior management who have a vested interest in seeing  your value analysis program succeed.

3. 40-Hours of Training: Value analysis is an art and science, therefore practitioners need  up to 40-hours of training and coaching  to be proficient in this discipline. If you decide not to train your  value analysis team leaders and members you will pay the high  price  of only skimming the surface of realizable savings and be- fore long hitting the wall on new savings opportunities altogether.

4. Outcome-Based Results: Setting predetermined savings and  quality goals annually is the engine that keeps your value anal- ysis teams on track, on budget and on time with your value  analysis initiatives. This then enables you to measure, manage and control your value analysis teams’ outcomes each year,  as opposed to hoping that savings will happen on their own  without vigorous controls over your outcomes. 

5. Team-Based Project Management: Most value analysis teams  are really structured as committees, not project teams since  this slows down their productivity, erodes accountability and pro- motes group think.  A much better way is to consider each  member of your value analysis team as a project manager for  each of your projects (i.e. savings initiatives) who then is held  accountable for predetermined outcomes.  This one change in  your team structure, will transform your value analysis teams  into a saving machine – almost overnight.

As it is with any maturing discipline, there are dozens of best practices to choose from to improve and enhance your value analysis team’s performance. However, these five best practices that I have outlined herein are at the top of my list as the most inventive, impactful and transformative of the scores that are available to you today.

Why not try just one of these best practices this month to see if it doesn’t make a big leap forward in your value analysis team’s performance. You have nothing to lose and everything to save by doing so.

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Filed Under: Best Practices • savingsblog