While supply chain challenges continued during 2022, I’m proud to say that UISS and its partners Acurity and Premier helped IHA members to whether the storm by providing timely and relevant communications regarding supply chain disruptions, standing up commitment programs to help source medical surgical and pharmaceuticals such as ProvideGX and S2S and making strategic investments in domestic manufacturing to create additional capacity and provide product assurance so patient care needs could be met. These tools and resources were leveraged by the members to mitigate stock outs and keep their supply chains flowing, but the work didn’t end there, 2022 was a year of recovery where hospitals recognized the need to look under every stone for opportunities to reduce cost, drive efficiencies and improve quality. The UISS team partnered with the members to provide;
• Market Insights & Trends
o Sharing meaningful and timely updates proactively on potential challenges that could impact or possible disrupt the healthcare supply chain
o Best practice recommendations to mitigate price increases while ensuring continuity of high-quality patient care
• Personalized/Customized SME Support
o Collaboration with industry experts across clinical and non-clinical service lines to support contract negotiations and other areas of interest
o Customized analysis and validation of supplier proposals for quality assurance purposes supported by clinical evidence, case studies, and market research
• Spend Landscape (Data is the business)
o Leveraging data to understand current state within a given initiative in order capitalize on savings opportunities via contract utilization and/or product/service conversion
Through a highly integrated support model and the alignment of strategic contracts and sourcing initiatives, UISS identified over $10 million dollars in savings opportunities for its members! Additionally, UISS added several new contracts to its portfolio to address key current and future high cost areas of spend including but not limited to;
- Energy Consulting & Sourcing
- Workforce Assessment, Operational Improvement, FTE Recruitment & Retention, Comp Design
- Non-Labor IT service contract assessment, benchmarking and cost savings
- OEM service contract cost savings program
Please see the full list of UISS Contracts for further details.
In 2023, UISS plans to continue to expand its supply chain and purchased services contracts, programs and services available to all IHA members and will be implementing an upstate supply chain forum to provide education, share insights and ideas amongst peers.
Best wishes for a Very Happy Holiday and a Healthy and Prosperous New Year!