Selecting high-quality, affordable outsourced services, commonly known as “purchased services,” is one of the more challenging tasks facing supply chain leaders in healthcare. After all, these services can account for a significant portion of a healthcare organization’s budget. Enter ECRI Institute’s SERVICEguide: a membership-based advisory service that helps hospitals maintain and manage their purchased services processes from beginning to end.
Moreover, SERVICEguide includes an interactive opportunity assessment dashboard with spend analytics that quickly reveal the highest potential areas for savings within a hospital or health system’s purchased services. National and regional price benchmarks on a broad range of services add value to the program.
ECRI Institute’s subject matter experts are an integral component of this program. They work closely with hospital decision-makers and contracting personnel to:
- Identify and research local and national vendors
- Develop a custom request for proposal (RFP)
- Perform line-by-line contract analyses of RFP vendor responses
- Present key findings and recommendations to hospital stakeholders, including cost savings opportunities
In fact, for a recent project, ECRI Institute helped a large health system save more than $1 million over a three-year term on cylinder medical gas purchases. The nonprofit organization provided comparative benchmarks, custom contract analyses, end-to-end RFP support, and vendor recommendations.
By moving to one vendor for the entire system, the provider was able to negotiate significant savings, improve the terms and conditions of its contract, and eliminate add-on fees, ECRI Institute officials reveal.
