Realignment of procurement in healthcare

Initial situation

The current structure has grown through the merger of various eye clinics and practices over the last 20 years. The clinics were previously organised in a decentralised manner, so data transparency across the individual medical care centres was incomplete. Shortly before the start of the project, the centralisation of the procurement function was started in-house. The purchasing volume for material requirements can be estimated at several million euros.

Objective

We were commissioned to create transparency in procurement and to support a stronger integration of procurement into the organisation. This was to be accompanied by the selection and implementation of an enterprise resource planning system. Co-sourcing of extensive procurement expenditures was expected to offer great savings potential. In addition, it was our task to support the procurement of longer-term assets (CAPEX) such as examination units and surgical microscopes.

Approach

Due to the previous decentralised procurement organisation (many locations worked with different products and prices) and the insufficient data transparency, the optimization process was started with an improvement of the data situation. Prices, quantities and conditions for all major product groups were collected in order to analyse the possibility of bundling and standardising medical products in a second step.

After bundling the needs of all sites and the sites agreed on a selection of products, the tender process began. After an initial overview of the price structures on the market, we went into direct negotiations with potential suppliers together with the person responsible for procurement. The same procedure was also implemented for the procurement of indirect requirements such as office materials and energy as well as CAPEX. In order to ensure better transparency of the requirements and expenditures of central procurement in the future, our experts supported the establishment of an inventory management system.

Results

The implemented measures and the introduction of an enterprise resource planning system created transparency about all products, prices and quantities used. Procurement was thus strengthened within the group and the desired centralisation was advanced. The co-sourcing project achieved savings of 20 per cent on average.