Supply savings work tends to end at the contract. Price is negotiated, the line item improves and the program reports a win.
Underneath that win, two physicians perform the same procedure and consume different supplies at different cost. Reimbursement does not follow the difference. Across a full procedural portfolio, those decisions accumulate into a margin effect no one has measured and no one owns — and the spend report is the wrong instrument to find it, because it aggregates away the detail where the money sits.
Procedure- and physician-level data closes that distance. Ian O’Malley, executive director of strategic sourcing at University of Chicago Medicine, shows what that level of detail makes visible and how it holds up when it meets resistance.
Learnings include:
- How procedural variation and supply utilization affect clinical margins
- Where physician- and procedure-level data surfaces cost outliers and savings opportunities
- The relationship between supply costs, reimbursement, quality and patient outcomes
- How data informs robotics investments, vendor decisions and clinical supply chain strategy