Preference Versus Standardization = Roadblock?

Evidence based purchasing—what a lovely phrase.  Thank you to Dee Dontelli for her post found here and the introduction of this new term.  Change is hard, times are hard right now and when things are changing and times are tough many people hold on to dear life for what they already know.  But when this happens, we end up seeing innovation and progress stifled.  The impediment, which Dee discusses, is the physician preference debate and how supply chain must move forward with purchasing from evidence.  Cohealo is with you Dee and we’re interested in seeing how many others are dealing with breaking down this barrier to progress.

As Dee’s experience suggests, many health systems aren’t making purchasing decisions based on evidence, the question becomes how can a health system or a partner to a health system promote an environment of evidence based decisions.  Another question that we are dealing with here at Cohealo, is that once this evidence is collected by health system A, why can’t other health systems come to learn the evidence of said purchase?  Why is everything so independent?  Doctors work together on research to prove clinical evidence in regards to new treatment options, they publish together and then provide reviews on one another’s work to validate findings.  If health system A spends the time and money to provide evidence that Product B is better than Product C, why not provide that evidence to the community to that the same number of hours aren’t wasted on the same process by health system B/C/D?

I believe that the future of health care is coming and very soon. The collaboration of health system personnel to perform studies and conclude with direct evidence why a purchase is being made – not just physicians, but the supply chain and materials and operational personnel uniting to understand the Total Cost of Ownership of the device.  This is something I’ve talked about for 15 years in health care information technology but haven’t seen in the supply chain discussion to date.  Purchase price, neglecting any trickle down costs or lost opportunities, seem to be the lone metric evaluated.  Yes there are many clinical efficacy discussions around the product before price is discussed, but the pricing situation is but a small part of the total cost of ownership.

What if you could log onto a system, find out all of the research already performed on a device by other health systems, understand the justifications to purchase said device, and see a breakdown of all costs and how they affect finance, supply, materials, and the department buying the device?  What if you could see a rating on a device, a rating provided by supply, materials, clinical engineering and clinical staff that exhibits the ease of use of the device, the overall satisfaction with the device 60 days post purchase, 120 days post purchase, or if there were any problems that resulted in returning the device?  I think that would be a good day, I think it would be a valuable day for healthcare; and I’m not going to stop working for one second until Cohealo introduces that tool to this market.

As always, thanks for your time and please let me know if you have any comments.  Till next time…