Preference card cleanups, a sustainability committee and a sweeping SKU purge are among the steps supply chain leaders say worked best this year to cut supply waste. Becker’s asked leaders to share the most effective step their teams took, and here’s what they said.
Vini Manchanda. Vice President of Supply Chain Services at Bloomington, Minn.-based HealthPartners: Two long-running strategies stay in play. The first is consistent preference card reviews, which remove unused items so they aren’t wasted, since they can’t be returned to the shelf once opened. The second is procedure pack reviews, which follow the same concept.
Eric Tritch. Senior Vice President of Supply Chain and Support Services and Chief Supply Chain Officer at Chicago-based UChicago Medicine: The system has engaged teams through a cross-functional sustainability committee called Team EAR3TH, which stands for Employees Aligned to Reduce, Reuse, Recycle Toward Health. Mr. Tritch said framing waste through a sustainability lens engages stakeholders more than focusing only on savings. Initiatives include reducing the supplies taken from supply rooms into patient rooms that must be discarded at discharge and changing utilization habits for anesthetic gas.
Dameka Miller. Senior Vice President of Supply Chain Management at Livonia, Mich.-based Trinity Health: The most effective step was the speed and discipline of executing conservation strategies during critical supply disruptions. By quickly aligning supply chain, clinical and operational leaders around utilization guidelines, product substitutions and inventory controls, the team eliminated waste in real time while preserving patient care, she said.
Michael Alfaro. Director of Materials Management at Ventura, Calif.-based Community Memorial Healthcare: To support a medical record upgrade, the team stabilized its distribution transition and optimized its item master, eliminating more than 62% of active SKUs. Directing that consolidation toward contracted and clinically optimal products helped secure supply continuity for core items and drove up to a 20% year-over-year decrease in inventory valuation, he said.
Scott Meiser. Vice President of Supply Chain at Pittsburgh-based Allegheny Health Network: Moving to perpetual inventory for procedural areas prompted a discussion about expiring product, site of care and case documentation. Mr. Meiser said site of care isn’t a big driver of waste, but better processes avoid a great deal of expiration and improve case documentation, which improves cost management and revenue.
