Category: Purchased Services

CIOReview Valify 50 Most Promising Healthcare Solution Providers 2019

Valify Recognized by CIO Review as one of the 50 Most Promising Healthcare Solution Providers – 2019″”

Posted on | by Valify Team
 
 
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As originally published in CIO Review: 50 Most Promising Healthcare Solution Providers – 2019.
  

Valify: Bringing a Unique Value Proposition to Healthcare Purchased Services

Despite best efforts towards reducing the overall cost of operations, healthcare companies often miss out on regulating one of their most expensive cost-drivers. Generally sidelined and overlooked, purchased services contribute to about 45 percent of a hospital’s non-labor budget. It is the vastness and uncertainty of outsourced services that bring complexities, making it difficult for hospitals to identify an appropriate service contract benchmark and derive savings. When hospitals outsource services, they can unwittingly fall prey to unnecessary costs which include duplicated services, hidden contract fees, and automatic price escalations. 

Valify, a company specializing in purchased services analytics uses a web-based solution that identifies, benchmarks, and monitors savings on purchased services categories. “We are the only company 100 percent dedicated to purchased services,” says Chris Heckler, CEO and founder of Valify. 

In order to mitigate the uncertainty in the broad description of indirect spend, Valify has classified the domain that has approximately 1,200 specialties into seven primary categories, namely, financial and administration, facility support, HR, insurance, clinical, ancillary, and IT-telecom. By working with the customer’s finance or IT division, Valify accesses the data and links the information to its solutions. The company then processes the data through proprietary algorithms and classifies them in less than 10 days. The firm also provides dedicated analyst support for the client to maximize the use of this information for savings opportunities. 
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Clinical Services: To outsource or To Not Outsource, That Is the Question

Posted on | by Valify Team

When providers think of purchased services, their minds typically go to facility support, IT, and ancillary services. However, this  scope is too limited and doesn’t encompass the full breadth of what falls under the definition of purchased services. The fact is, there are over 250 clinical services that are categorized as a purchased service including pharmacy compounding services, dialysis services, imaging services, and neurology services.

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What’s Ahead for Hospital Purchased Services Cost Reduction Technology in 2018

Posted on | by Valify Team

Purchased services represents up to 45% of the non-labor expense budget within a health system. As more executives look to purchased services categories for potential expense reduction, 2018 is an important year, and Valify has several important innovations planned to assist clients in controlling and reducing purchased services expense in the year ahead:

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Monitoring Purchased Services Expenses – Part 2: Best Practices and How to Get Started

Posted on | by Valify Team

In part one of this two-part series, we stated that continual monitoring is the only way to ensure actual spend aligns with budgeting expectations. We discussed at length the many red flags, pitfalls, and common missteps on the path to successful and regular monitoring.

Though the process of tracking and monitoring expenses to find realized savings is difficult perhaps more difficult for purchased services than for any other area within a hospital below are best practices that have been proven effective.

In part two of this series, we discuss the top best practices and tips to make monitoring expenses easier, faster, and more successful.

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Monitoring Purchased Services Expenses – Part 1: Understanding the Road Blocks, Red Flags and Pitfalls

Posted on | by Valify Team

Unlike with tracking expenses for products and capital within a health system, purchased services are difficult to quantify. Purchased services have no item number, are primarily fulfilled by local vendors, and are purchased off-PO 75-85% of the time. These factors make purchased services a complex area in which to manage budgets, to track expenses, and to implement compliance without the proper tools and best practices.

If purchased services expenses are not monitored regularly, there is no guarantee health systems will see the savings that were planned for following a rigorous vendor negotiation. This can be defeating for those who spent the time and energy finding a better deal and can ultimately be bad for business when expected savings are missing on the bottom line at year end.

Continual monitoring is the only way to ensure actual spend aligns with savings expectations. Purchased services expense tracking and monitoring is an ongoing process with plenty of pitfalls and common missteps. However, purchased services professionals can make the monitoring process more manageable and productive by knowing the pitfalls to look out for and by following the industry best practices (see blog: Monitoring Purchased Services Expenses. Part 2: Best Practices and How to Get Started). Continue reading →

3 Simple Ways to Accelerate Your Sourcing Process with Better Results

Posted on | by Valify Team

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From standard purchased services categories like laundry and linen or HVAC services to seasonal/geographic driven categories such as snow plow services, there are hundreds of categories and thousands of vendors that hospitals and health systems utilize daily. Every hospital and health system is different and has unique needs based on their location and the patients they serve. Aligning these particular needs with the unique factors that pertain to each purchased services category is challenging, and most of the work that is done during the RFP process can be daunting as well.

Depending on the complexity of the category, an RFP cycle can take four to six months from start to finish and require a time commitment of 5-20% from each sourcing professional during the bidding event (Robert J. Engel. Strategic Sourcing: A Step-By-Step Practical Model, The Procurement Centre). Insight from Valify’s database shows, a typical health system’s purchased services spend is spread out, on average, across 383 individual categories (some have spend across as many has 734 categories). These figures directly correlate to the number of vendors a health care provider has on contract.

It’s fair to say that sourcing professionals spend a significant amount of time working on RFPs – including conducting research specific to each category, defining award criteria, managing vendor communications, evaluating responses, analyzing impacts, and negotiating final terms. While each of these aspects could benefit from process improvement measures, our purchased services experts have put together a list of the top three tips for accelerating the RFP process while achieving better results.

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Solve the top 3 purchased services spending challenges with timely data and analytics

Posted on | by Valify Team

One of the biggest difficulties healthcare purchased services professionals face is trying to negotiate more favorable vendor contracts for their hospital or health system. With hundreds of vendors spread across numerous departments and facilities, it is nearly impossible — without the right data analytics platform — to have enough time and information to build a persuasive case.

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Benchmark your way to greater insights and savings in purchased services

Posted on | by Valify Team

Visualizing purchased services spending is essential for controlling costs at any hospital or health system. After all, purchased services comprise 45 percent of a hospital’s non-labor budget. The ability to drill down on spending across a well-organized hierarchy of more than 1,200 potential purchased services categories provides an even more precise picture of how dollars are being spent. Spending data alone, however, offers only directional insights.

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