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 Essential Healthcare Management is excited, energized and ready for 2014. As a team, we are equipped with hundreds of years of specialized healthcare experience and knowledge. With 14 experts in various healthcare disciplines and nearly 40 clients, we have the unique opportunity to gain necessary access, create meaningful dialogue and action, and navigate the maze that is healthcare today. We know the landscape. We engage with market share movers and decision makers. Now is a very unique time in the healthcare industry. EHM is ready for the challenge. Come join us!
New Team Members, New Service, New Opportunities!
We are rolling out our new E HM GPO and IDN Assessment service at the upcoming Federation of American Hospitals conference in Washington, D.C. The GPO and IDN Assessment service provides a comprehensive company review to determine the best group contracting strategy to drive profitable sales, specifically, the anticipated impact of GPO and IDN contracts. Our new service is lead by healthcare veteran and recently named EHM Senior Advisor Gary Gustafson, former President and Owner of the ANAE. EHM also proudly announces Frank McGrath as Executive Director. We could not be more excited to have these two respected healthcare experts on our team!
EHM's Frank Ripullo at FAH
Federation of American Hospitals (FAH) Vice Chairman of the Purchase Service Subcommittee and Managing Partner of Essential Healthcare Management, LLC (EHM), Frank Ripullo, is moderating several programs at this year’s 2014 Public Policy Conference and Business Exposition. Ripullo brings EHM’s entire netw ork and expertise in hospital supply chain management and healthcare contracting to this role. EHM’s place in the healthcare supply chain allows us to build strong channels for suppliers to succeed in the marketplace while enabling providers to lower their overall operating costs. Ripullo’s team represents all areas of the healthcare supply chain, providing services while keeping quality of care the driving force behind all that we do.
Opportunities to attend a variety of GPO informational break-out sessions, hospital management, networking, and educational workshops that address current trends in the health care industry are part of the conference program. Board Committee Member, and, EHM partner, John Pritchard of Medical Distributions Solutions, Inc (MDSI), will also be attending. MDSI, a leading publishing and content company, provides information, communication and educational services to providers, manufacturers and distributors involved in the healthcare sector.
The conference also features presentations by leaders of Congress and the Obama Administration. FAH is the national representative of investor-owned and managed community hospitals and health systems throughout the United States. The FAH membership includes companies and organizations in the health care industry that share a common philosophy of providing high quality, affordable health care through free enterprise.
Ready for your Purchased Services Check-Up?
It’s no secret the hot spot for savings within healthcare organizations has become their extensive purchased services and outsourcing agreements. While the supply savings rock has already been turned over and squeezed for every dollar, huge untapped savings opportunities lie within an organization’s purchased services contracts. The biggest challenge in finding savings in purchased services is discovered as soon as the analysis begins, “…how do I even know if this is a good deal?”
What is a good deal? Is it negotiating the lowest price? Is it acquiring the best contract terms? Is it how you compare to your peer group? Is it all of the above, which is typically referred to as the “best value”? Corporate Contracts would argue it’s the latter, but a couple of challenges still remain. First, how do you know how you compare to your peers and if you don’t compare well, how can you better your position? Both of these questions can be answered with a good benchmarking and (re)negotiations initiative. The fact that a hospital spends more money in any particular area than its peers is not an indication of a poor contract. It does suggest, however, a good place to begin the hunt for potential savings. The second challenge is a bit more daunting. Most existing purchased services contracts within a healthcare organization are between 3-7 years old. This typically means that the organization’s staff has probably little or no experience with the current pulse of that particular market - making it difficult to assess the value of the contract. The challenges are real, and expending resources to probe for savings in purchased services contracts can be time consuming and costly if an overall purchased services savings plan isn’t in place.
Corporate Contracts is designed to take a healthcare organization’s data, analyze it against peer data and industry best practices, report opportunities and ultimately negotiate that optimal deal. In partnership with Baseline, Corporate Contracts can offer you better ways to examine your purchased services data. Would you like to see your spend broken down similar to this?
Analyze, benchmark and attack a plan of action around your non-supply spend. Do this now by contacting Corporate Contracts, LLC for your purchased services checkup.
Corporate Contracts is an industry-leading sourcing and negotiations firm securing customers best in class contracts in purchased services and technology. Corporate Contracts services a wide range of customers in diverse industries such as healthcare, insurance, financial services, big 4 consulting, manufacturing and private equity. This diverse experience allows Corporate Contracts to share unmatched market intelligence across it’s customer base. For more information please contact Stan Schroeder.
EHM Works Closely with IFES
EHM is honored to be working closely with Hays Waldrop as he launches the Inaugural Meeting of the Institute of Facilities Executives and Suppliers
While IFES is a new endeavor, the model and concept is backed by the successful founders of the Institute of Healthcare Executives and Suppliers (IHES), and the The Council of Supply Chain Executives (The Council).
This first meeting will take place July 17 and 18, 2014 and promises to bring premier healthcare executives together from many of the largest and most respected Health Systems in the country to meet with participating suppliers in small private groups to discuss the unique challenges surrounding both purchased services and healthcare facilities management, in a non-adversarial environment.
For more information please contact Hays Waldrop at (615) 794-2501 or Hays@ihesllc.com. Generations
Rob Bahna, Vice President of Sales, Resuscitation International
Every generation has its different challenges growing up. Since I am not a parent, I am certainly not an expert on raising children. And since all of our experiences growing up were also framed by our family, neighborhoods and the people we encountered – it is always difficult to make a judgment on when it was easier or more difficult to grow up.
Like most things, the reality is somewhere in the middle. Each generation has had certain advantages and disadvantages as we have progressed through time. And I am not sure all of them have really been “progress”. Unfortunately, my generation may be the last with legitimate chances for almost everyone to do "better" than their parents did and live the American Dream. I think that presents unique challenges today.
My young formative years were in the 1970s and 80s in the Midwest, in middle class
America. And I feel very lucky to have had those experiences with my great family and friends. Here are some of the reasons why:
We would leave the house in the morning with the gear from whatever sport was in season, and my parents would say “Be home by dark.” And we played all day, often until we were forced to quit because we ran out of light.
We actually kept score, and learned to both win and lose. It helped prepare us with life lessons - i.e. that things don’t always go your way. There was none of this “no competition” rhetoric that in my opinion, while attempting to protect kids, really does not prepare them for what they will face later. When we faced class elections, class ranks, ACT and SAT scores, college admissions, interviews for jobs and promotions, we had learned tools to help us deal with those situations as best we could.
We learned to figure things out for ourselves, and organize our activities since there were no adults around most of the time (and we could not check in on the cell phone every 15 minutes, and there were certainly no GPS trackers). Every once in a while, tempers would flare, but we learned to deal with it since there was no referee to decide the outcome. If there is no one there to make you play nice, kids figure it out pretty quickly that there is a code that they must learn to accept.
Our parents would not have thought about approaching a coach and complaining about playing time. The only time they would intervene was if things were getting way out of hand verbally or physically. I do believe all kids should play and have fun in sports, but I am not a fan of the "equal time" philosophy and having everyone play every position beyond the age of 6 or 7.
Computer games were new then, and while we enjoyed playing them as we got older, they never got in the way of the other activities we did. We played soccer, hockey, ping pong or even Nerf basketball in the basement - or garage if there was inclement weather. (Granted, no matter who you are you can only play Pong so long).
We made up games to keep us busy; whiffleball against the garage, basketball using Trackball paddles (wearing gloves so your hands didn’t get too beat up), throwing Darts (yes the real metal ones), even BB gun fights, using your skate board as a water ski behind your bicycle, exploring in the woods and fields, and walking everywhere.
We had a paper route every morning, 7 days a week, at 5:45 a.m. We learned to work hard, sacrifice certain things, personal responsibility, and the value of money. I remember how proud I was when I bought my first Walkman, ping pong table and waterbed.
It was certainly a different time. And of course we did not realize how lucky we were. Not everything we did was safe or smart. But we survived. And we learned many valuable skills. It could be considered better or worse based on your definition. But I am glad it was the childhood I had and remember so fondly.
If you are lucky enough in 20 years to look back on the years you are living now, will you remember them fondly? The choice is up to you!
Purchased Services
Frank founded EHM with the idea that small industry suppliers needed a fast, inexpensive way to get a "seat at the table" to compete with the much larger companies in healthcare who enjoy large marketshare and have massive budgets to field national accounts people. This idea has been tremendously successful, as EHM continues to help suppliers of many goods and services to scale their companies in a rapid, manageable way, without adding expensive "overhead" costs.
Over the last 3 years we have moved deeply into the largely untouched area of Purchased Services contracting. We find that even the most experienced Materials, Contracting, and Sourcing people struggle in many of these areas:
Nutrition, EVS, Facilities, Reference Lab, H.R., and others - don't have the depth of knowledge and skill to address the intrinsic challenges of negotiating with service companies in these categories. To bring value to hospitals and health systems, we have taken two separate but concurrent approaches to this problem.
1. We have worked with experts to develop tools that can analyze pricing, terms and service levels, and benchmark against other rates and prices nationally. This gives healthcare professionals a "leg up" in their negotiations. With the knowledge of how they compare vs. other systems' rates, these negotiators can then drill down to the best possible arrangements with their potential service suppliers. The tools that we are bringing to market will allow for increasing levels of expertise as more data enters the system. The database becomes more robust as more line items are entered and "normalized". The Baseline Group, helmed by President Chris Heckler, EHM's resident Purchased Services Expert - will revolutionize the way that hospitals and systems contract for services by eliminating all the various obstacles in the process.
2. EHM is partnering with a cadre of companies whose unique offerings bring non-traditional savings and/or revenue to healthcare, with proven strategies and benefits.
* MainSail Group: Creating Non-Traditional Revenue Opportunities for healthcare institutions through various means such as leveraged branding, marketing exclusivity, and infrastructure investments. MainSail monetizes existing assets by using existing methods available to, but rarely used by, healthcare institutions.
 Franklin provides an industry exclusive portfolio management platform that allows facility leaders to benchmark and reduce their property's energy consumption. Typical savings from 10-45%!
 * Criterion Security Services: Criterion's mission is to provide professional, personalized, and cost effective security programs that protect our clients’ property, assets, and employees. We do this by employing a highly trained, professional workforce that utilizes a 10 point “best practices” approach emphasizing: customer service; high quality contract performance; a superior work environment for our staff; and the ability to improve our services through client satisfaction surveys and performance evaluations.
* United Waste Solutions: UWS is a professional waste consulting company that can, in most cases, reduce your waste expenses and/or increase your recycling revenues by 25% to 60%.
* Corporate Contracts: A team of Purchased Services Negotiators that will work with your organization, behind the scenes to create huge savings opportunities through a patented negotiation process that has proven successful for 15 years and has saved hundreds of millions of dollars for their customers.
* SunClean: SunClean, LLC is a Bronx, New York based supplier of cost reducing green solutions, including solar/battery powered Smart Trash Compaction Systems, Compacting/Baling units and Compost to Water machines (C2W) that can reduce up to
2,000 lbs of organic (food) waste to bio-safety level 1 water in a 24 hour cycle.
* The Baseline Group: Baseline is an innovative new analysis and benchmarking database that allows healthcare sourcing specialists to find the absolute best "deal" for their organization.
* Glowzone: Glowzone provides the only patented Photo-Luminescent Exit Signs that meet the 100 foot visibility standards. This allows hospitals to replace their traditional electrical signs and save!
* WestCMR: WestCMR purchases surplus surgical disposables from hospitals and surgery centers due to contract changes, budget cuts, changes in surgeon preferences and OEM return policies.
Hospitals spend up to 40% of their non-labor dollars on Purchased Services. EHM is there to help reduce that number and create a more efficient organization.
Upcoming Schedule
- Federation of American Hospitals Public Policy Conference and Business Exposition, March 2nd - March 4th in Washington, DC
- Journal of Healthcare Contracting Purchased Services Summit, March 24th - March 25th in Phoenix, AZ
- AORN Surgical Conference and Expo, March 30th - April 1st in Chicago, IL
- Novation Supplier Summit, March 31st - April 2nd in Las Vegas, NV
- Spring 2014 IDN Summit and Reverse Expo, April 7th - April 9th in Orlando, FL
We hope to see you soon!
You can always find us at www.essentialhm.net
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