Healthcare leaders are finding new ways to drive standardization, savings and uptime through evidence-based technology.
Healthcare operations leaders are facing mounting challenges: rising costs, staffing shortages and increasing pressure to maintain uptime for mission-critical equipment. As hospital margins shrink — with median operating margins dipping to 1.7% — traditional procurement and service models are struggling to keep up.
According to PartsSource’s recent webinar, “Bridging the Gaps in Healthcare Operations,” the key to overcoming these challenges isn’t simply about having more data; rather, it’s about eliminating the fragmentation that exists across procurement, service and operational workflows. When organizations unify these processes through a single enterprise approach, they gain the clarity and control needed to standardize procurement, optimize service delivery and strengthen overall resilience.
With an integrated workflow in place, hospital systems and healthcare technology management (HTM) teams are more empowered than ever. They gain unprecedented visibility into asset and service activity across vendors, sites and modalities, enabling them to act on information rather than navigate siloed or incomplete insights. Evidence-based decision-making becomes easier and more consistent, driving greater efficiency, reducing purchasing costs and minimizing downtime on mission-critical equipment.
From fragmented processes to data-driven decisions
In many organizations today, supply chain and HTM teams still manage hundreds of vendors and thousands of contracts across disconnected systems. This complexity leads to high variability in quality, unpredictable costs and inefficiency.
When organizations consolidate these activities within a data-integrated platform, they gain full visibility into their spend, suppliers and asset performance. This shift from reactive to proactive operations allows leaders to identify top-performing vendors, standardize sourcing and reduce cost variability while improving uptime.
PartsSource data shows that top-performing teams leveraging this model achieve 9% to 15% lower cost of service through better vendor management, workflow automation and continuous quality measurement.
Reimagining service contracts and sourcing models
Many healthcare organizations are also rethinking how they manage service contracts and parts sourcing. According to PartsSource data, the average provider manages around 146 traditional contracts, each requiring separate oversight. This siloed model consumes time and resources that could otherwise be directed to patient care.
Forward-thinking systems are now consolidating those contracts and adopting managed service models that simplify operations and deliver consistent performance. By integrating sourcing, purchasing and service management into one digital workflow, they’re not only cutting costs but also building resilience and scalability into their operations.
Automation plays a critical role. By digitizing manual sourcing and purchase order events, hospitals are freeing up their HTM and supply chain teams to focus on higher-value initiatives, such as predictive maintenance and strategic capital planning.
Why digital procurement matters now more than ever
Labor shortages, inflation and extended equipment lifecycles have made operational efficiency a clinical necessity. Health systems that adopt evidence-based, tech-enabled procurement strategies are better positioned to meet rising patient demand while managing constrained budgets and workforce limitations.
As one of the industry’s largest mission-critical technology platforms, PartsSource supports more than 15,000 U.S. clients, overseeing over 100,000 assets and managing more than 850,000 service events each year through its extensive network of suppliers and service providers. This scale has demonstrated that the organizations most successful at navigating today’s challenges share a common trait: they treat data not just as a metric, but as a strategic asset.
