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7 Revenue-Focused Tips for Hospital Supply Chain Management

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Hospital supply chain management is complex due to challenges like limited inventory visibility, a lack of audit trail for supplies, and limited control over procurement. These issues can result in waste, costing healthcare organizations valuable money. Research suggests that United States hospitals could save up to $25.7 billion annually with improved handling of products and operations.

As a medical supplier or healthcare distributor, understanding the supply chain hurdles your clients face is critical if you are going to cater to their needs. These hospital supply chain management tips provide essential insights and give you the tools you need to enhance collaboration with your clients.

7 Hospital Supply Chain Management Tips

Supply chain hurdles do not just impact healthcare workers. They can also prove problematic for patients, increasing the risk of supply gaps or shortages — a critical issue when it comes to potentially life-saving equipment, tools, and medications. Implementing the below hospital supply chain management tips is thus a question of cutting costs and improving patient care.

1. Use Technology to Improve Overall Inventory Management

Technology improves inventory management to help cut costs. Management can enhance pipeline visibility to track medical device product usage in a hospital or healthcare facility using cutting-edge QR codes. Radiofrequency identification, RFID, tags are another option. RFID tags are used to track everything from vehicles to pets.

Cloud-based solutions are another expected game-changer for the healthcare supply chain management market. A hospital is a data-driven organization, collecting masses of patient data, from personal details to medical history, current symptoms, and insurance information. Cloud-based solutions help integrate information coming in from diverse locations.

2. Manage Medical Devices to Point-of-Use

Once QR or RFID codes are in place to track inventory, hospitals will gain comprehensive oversight of how, when, where, and why medical devices and products are used. This opens the door to mapping products throughout the entire supply chain through to the point of use. Managers will have apparent oversight of what devices are already in circulation versus where supplies are lacking.

Hospitals can also correlate data regarding medical device use with general organizational data (patient populations, staffing, seasonal health trends, etc.). They can then see what factors may be impacting device use and use this data to ensure optimal usage, sparing extraneous costs.

3. Examine Utilization Rates to Avoid Waste

The use of QR codes and RFID tags opens up the door to real-time locating systems. These tracking systems can be used to find equipment accurately and quickly in the present and further to inform supply chain analytics in the future. RTLS implementation allows healthcare systems to not only streamline equipment utilization but also improve patient flow.

For example, supply chain teams regularly issue extraneous purchase orders for moveable medical equipment, MME, due to poor visibility. Often, MME is sitting idle and readily available – but forgotten or lost in the shuffle. This is especially true of the larger hospital organization. Utilization data can be leveraged to avoid needless equipment rentals and purchases.

4. Promote Clinical Engagement

Healthcare professionals are on the front lines of patient care in any organization, be it a private clinic or a public hospital. These experts are often a fantastic resource for identifying points of waste in the supply chain. They can also provide insights into how to standardize product usage best and prioritize products. Gathering feedback from clinicians further helps to establish trust within the supply chain.

In addition to asking healthcare professionals for their input, it is also essential to provide them with the education they need to use resources optimally. Adequate training can help encourage good habits and discourage bad ones – such as unnecessary hoarding of supplies. A physician leadership program is one helpful way to raise awareness and provide actionable advice at the ground level.

5. Reconfigure to Need-Based Ordering

Poor inventory management can result in excess or expired stock. This is a financial drain on hospitals and poses a potential risk to patients (in the worst-case scenario that an expired item is used). Instead of simply filling supply rooms, hospital management must shift to a need-based ordering system.

The technologies described above, like QR codes and RTLS systems, can help in this regard. For example, advanced inventory management systems will automatically send a digital alert when the amount of a select product falls below a certain level, ensuring there is enough lead time to order fresh supplies. Such systems can even be configured to automate ordering from suppliers.

6. Understand Costs to Ensure Effective Pricing

Healthcare providers who fully understand costs can ensure effective pricing. For example, a cost-accounting system can be used to break down the cost of each service based on supplies and human resources used.

Many hospitals lack the requisite accounting methods to determine details like Medicare cost allocation or cost-to-charge ratio accurately. However, this data is integral to a smoothly running pricing system. Knowing the cost-to-charge relationship at the level of patient care will promote better investment in tools overall, creating more value for both the hospital and the patient.

7. Reexamine Suppliers Relationships

Supplier relationships are never set in stone – at least, they should not be. Suppliers and hospitals alike should revisit vendor contracts regularly. As hospital managers gather data about supply chain management using the tools and processes described above, they may find that they must adapt their ordering. For example, consolidating contracts and suppliers can be one way to save.

Stay Up to Date on the Latest Healthcare Supply Challenges

Share Moving Media helps healthcare distributors like yourself keep track of the latest news in the healthcare market, providing the competitive edge needed to increase market share. We can further help you connect with your target audience with our comprehensive healthcare marketing and content services.

We are a full-service media agency, producing everything from traditional print publications to podcasts, webinars, and more. We cater specifically to suppliers and distributors in the healthcare and medical fields. Visit the Share Moving Media blog for more actionable content.

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How Artificial Intelligence is Improving Value-Based Care

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Artificial intelligence (AI) allows computers to mimic the learning, problem-solving, perception, and decision-making skills of a human. Once considered science fiction, AI has become a part of our everyday reality. Today, AI is used for customer service chatbots, media streaming providers, banking and financial services, smart home devices, and more.

AI is also gaining ground in the healthcare sector, where it’s driving the efficiency of value-based care. Value-based care is defined by its intent to create more value for the patient. Every element of a value-based healthcare system should enhance the quality of patient care and thus improve patient outcomes. AI in value-based care can help realize this vision in various ways.

An Overview of AI in Value-Based Care

Value-based care isn’t just about individual patients. It further aims to create better health for broader populations and to lower per-capita costs of healthcare at large. All of this adds up to more effective and efficient healthcare systems that better serve patient interests while minimizing needless spending.

Organize and Analyze Healthcare Data

Healthcare is a data-driven industry. A single patient file can contain extensive amounts of information, from past diagnoses to blood test results and basic facts like height, weight, and age. To diagnose a patient successfully, a healthcare provider needs to have access to all of this information. AI can help better organize, manage, and even analyze such data.

What’s more, AI can take datasets from not just one patient but from many patients, bringing together large swaths of information to make it easier to identify significant trends across patient populations. For example, AI algorithms can track, pinpoint, and analyze adverse events in pharmaceutical clinical trials, helping to speed drug development and get patients new medicines they need faster.

Research suggests that AI can be used at many stages of the drug development process. For example, in drug design, AI can predict drug-protein interactions and help model the 3D structure of a target protein. In the later development stage of drug screening, AI can be used to help predict elements like bioactivity and toxicity.

Enhance Diagnostic Procedures and Predictions

AI can also help improve diagnostic procedures and predictions for individual patients, directly impacting care decisions and outcomes. This fact becomes especially evident when looking at the promise offered by human genome sequencing.

Every individual has unique DNA. Through genome sequencing, researchers can now analyze each person’s DNA and identify genetic markers that indicate a person has a greater likelihood of developing a particular disease. With this information – which goes well beyond what a standard physical exam and health history can provide – doctors and patients can benefit from improved diagnostics predictions.

One famous example is the actress Angelina Jolie. Through genome testing, the actress discovered that she was a carrier for the BRCA1 gene mutation, making her more susceptible to breast cancer. A woman with the BRCA1 gene has a 69% chance of developing breast cancer. In comparison, the average woman has about a 12% chance of this. As a preventative measure, Jolie opted to have a double mastectomy.

Improve Support Informed Clinical Decision-Making

As the Angelina Jolie example also shows, AI-driven data analysis can be used not only for predictive modeling but also to guide healthcare decision-making. The more data a patient and healthcare provider have, the more informed of a decision they can make, jointly, regarding the patient’s course of care. In Jolie’s case, the identified risk warranted what some might consider a drastic step.

This shows how AI in value-based care can directly impact individual patients. Data-driven decision-making removes some of the unpredictability of healthcare. Instead of waiting to see if cancer developed, Jolie proactively decided to minimize the risk. The promise of AI-supported data analysis is especially significant given the rise in electronic health records (EHRs), which digitize patient data.

This approach would arguably also prove more cost-efficient at an individual level and minimize the burden on the healthcare system (when considering a long-term cancer patient’s requirements). Cost-cutting is also part of the value-based healthcare model, which aims to reduce the cost of services without negatively impacting the outcome – or, better yet, improve outcomes without increasing costs.

AI in Value-Based Care: A Case Study

A case study can help crystallize the information above and demonstrate how AI can contribute to value-based healthcare. For example, consider how AI can be used to help predict epileptic seizures. Epilepsy is a neurodegenerative illness that causes recurrent and unpredictable episodes.

Individuals diagnosed with epilepsy can benefit from medication. However, approximately one-third of patients can’t successfully manage their symptoms using medicine and still experience dangerous spontaneous seizures. While surgical interventions are available to treat epilepsy, the overall success rate remains relatively low, and the risk of complications is significant.

More recently, researchers have begun exploring the utility of AI in predicting epileptic seizures. By analyzing large swaths of historical data regarding epileptic seizures, it may be possible to identify so-called seizure generators correctly. This can help keep patients safe and further open up new avenues for developing alternative interventions to address and possibly prevent seizures.

This example clearly shows how AI can help healthcare become more personal while also allowing for more significant predictive and preventative measures. As AI capacities continue to evolve and the healthcare system gains confidence implementing tools like those described above, more such examples of AI in value-based care can be expected.

Understand the Healthcare Marketplace with Share Moving Media

As a healthcare manufacturer, it’s essential to stay up to date on the latest developments in your field. Technological innovations like AI in healthcare directly impact the providers and systems you serve. Understanding what matters to them will help you better map the customer journey and meet each customer’s unique needs.

Share Moving Media is committed to helping medical suppliers gain a better understanding of the healthcare marketplace, which allows them to increase market share. We are a full-service media company that helps healthcare suppliers create compelling content to reach their target audiences, including blogs, podcasts, webinars, and more.

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5 Lessons for Healthcare Suppliers from Population Health Analytics

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Population health analytics is a great boon to healthcare suppliers and distributors with the potential of driving their businesses forward.

The collection of patient data from different demographics improve the services provided to hospitals and distributors. Healthcare supply analytics benefits significantly from the data furnished by population health. It helps identify areas where specific products have great demand.

As a medical supplier, you need to forecast the healthcare demands on the horizon. Analysis of this data can help make the supply chain more efficient, reducing overhead expenses from stocking up on supplies that medical providers don’t need.

Global market size for healthcare analytics, which includes population health, will grow to around $40 billion by 2025. This developing demand in the healthcare industry makes it more crucial to increase your awareness about population health.

What Health Suppliers Should Know About Population Healthcare Supply Analytics

Value-based care is at the core of population health analytics. The benefits of correctly matching a patient to a health provider can be extended to medical suppliers – matching suppliers’ capabilities with the providers’ needs.

These five things can help you understand the impact of population health analytics on your business and the health industry:

1. What is Population Health Analytics?

Population health covers a broad area that’s not always well-defined. However, management and analysis of its data have a clear goal. It improves the health of the communities and specific groups of people, addressing medical problems on a large scale.

The information gained by providers from this type of health analytics can give medical suppliers an insight on how to match their customers’ needs.

Population health investigates the following fields:

  • Health outcomes and distribution in a population
  • Patterns of health determinants
  • Policies and interventions at both individual and social levels

Widespread health problems such as heart disease and diabetes require population health data to help create effective health solutions.

Population health analytics seeks to bridge the gap between financial and clinical aspects of the health industry. Medical errors pose health risks to patients and have severe implications in other areas, such as psychological issues for healthcare professionals and financial losses for the health institutions. Data collected from various disciplines, including those gathered outside the health sector, goes through population health analysis.

As a result, analytics will help standardize clinical approaches, identify the right healthcare products to combat community-wide illnesses, and reduce cases of medical errors.

2. Analysis of Claims Data

Population health includes claims data, which are readily available and have a structured and standardized format. However, the data is retrospective consisting of a month or year-old information. Even so, it still helps providers to study patients based on their claims history. 

Claims data help providers understand their patients better with information such as:

  • Patient demographics
  • Dates of service
  • Diagnosis codes
  • Cost of services

Analysis of claims data helps healthcare professionals learn any major health issues their patients face and how they usually pay for their treatments.

While not complete in and of itself, claims data provides an excellent starting point for healthcare analytics.

3. Importance of Electronic Health Record Data

Electronic Health Record data, also known as EHR, fills the gap that claims data cannot provide. A vast majority of hospitals focus on implementing EHR in their infrastructure. It allows for a better understanding of patient-oriented information such as vital signs, medications, allergies, lab data and imaging, and immunization dates.

EHRs can go deeper into detail, giving information such as provider impressions of their patients, records of patients’ concerns about misdiagnoses, and care processes patients received.

The availability of EHR datasets can help healthcare providers learn specific population health information, including:

  • Patients with high blood pressure readings that are at high-risk levels
  • Number of patients taking multiple medications which could have contraindications
  • Number of pediatric patients who did not receive the recommended dosages because of missed immunization appointments

However, the plethora of data that EHRs provide is also the source of its downside. Analysis requires additional workflows to make the data structured. Some of its fields contain static PDF files, imaging reports, and lab results. These data need further processing before going through analysis.

Since data entry can be overly complex, some users end up taking shortcuts. They could leave default values in place or copy old data and paste them for each new visit.

Fortunately, EHR continues to undergo optimization. A large segment of the healthcare industry is redesigning EHR to accommodate current global challenges as well.

4. Value of Socioeconomic Data

Socioeconomic status can impact a patient’s experience on the healthcare they receive, such as the waiting time and quality of doctor care. Population health analytics can help in addressing every patient’s holistic needs using socioeconomic data. Environmental, community, and social data are vital in telling the whole story behind a patient’s condition. 

Further analysis of specific groupings organized by location, ethnicity, and age are  possible using socioeconomic datasets, such as:

  • Local healthy food choices
  • Average income
  • English proficiency
  • Transportation access
  • Education levels

Health management programs immensely benefit from socioeconomic data, giving them information on addressing specific groups’ health needs.

5. Challenges Addressed by Population Health Analytics

Population health analytics aids healthcare professionals in taking proactive measures when providing treatment. For instance, the results of data analysis can give a prediction on the possibility of acute kidney failure in hospitalized patients.

Some of the challenges that population health analytics address are:

  • Increased healthcare costs
  • Inaccurate patient data
  • Inability to recognize developing health threats

The analysis can also identify what types of medication are in high demand for a specific group. It can help point out ineffective prescriptions that are soon to be obsolete. 

Information such as these is crucial to medical suppliers, allowing you to focus more on providing healthcare solutions that your customers currently need. You can also have a better forecast as to which products will be in high demand in the future.

Population Health Analytics Improves Healthcare Supply Business

These five lessons from population health analytics can help you improve specific business processes. You can strategically tailor your approach, significantly reducing risks from investing in products that won’t sell.

Share Moving Media provides webinars and training to help healthcare manufacturers and distributors address their clients’ needs. Contact us for more strategies on how to boost your business effectively.

How to Use Webinars to Create Content for All Stages of the Funnel

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The medical supply market is competitive. As a healthcare supplier, you can boost success by proactively targeting consumers at every stage in the marketing and sales funnel. Webinars are one effective way to do this. This e-guide explains how to harness the power of webinars for healthcare sales.

An Introduction to Full-Funnel Marketing

Experts agree that a full-funnel approach is essential for future digital marketing success. While the terminology for the stages of the marketing and sales funnel varies, a general breakdown might look like this:

  • Awareness: A prospective customer is made aware of a business’ product or service.
  • Discovery: The prospective customer – the lead – learns more about the product or service.
  • Evaluation: The lead takes time to consider whether they need the service or product.
  • Engagement: The lead decides whether or not to make a purchase.
  • Commitment and purpose: The lead commits to making a purchase and becomes a customer.
  • Loyalty and advocacy: The customer returns to make a repeat purchase. They may also recommend the product or service to others.

Webinars for Healthcare Sales at Every Stage of the Funnel

Although the concept of full-funnel marketing has been prevalent for years, technological and organizational hurdles made practical implementation difficult. Until now, of course. Today, modern digital technologies –like webinars – make a full-funnel approach more accessible than ever.

Here is how to harness the power of webinars to create content for every stage of the medical equipment sales funnel.

Awareness

At the awareness stage, the goal is to target your potential customer with compelling content. Through that content, you want to make the lead aware of your product or service offering.

It is generally more impactful to steer clear of product-, service-, brand-, or business-specific content. The lead isn’t yet looking to make a purchase. Overtly and aggressively pushing them to buy something will likely turn them off and send them away.

Instead, you want to inform and entertain them. At this point, webinars should focus on providing value-added content, not on proactive selling. For example, a webinar raising awareness about a specific ailment (e.g., Type 2 Diabetes) can segue to discussing treatment options (like glucose tracking) and ultimately serve as a platform for a product (such as blood sugar monitors).

Discovery

The goal of the discovery phase is to provide the potential customer with more information about a company’s product or service. With your content, you want to pressure the pain. What does that mean?

You want to clarify how the product or service can improve the lead’s life. What pain point will it fix? At this point, it’s critical to maintain the lead’s attention. It is like reeling in a fish — you need to keep them on the line until they are ready to conclude a purchase (the final stage in the funnel).

You want to make sure you are providing the lead with all the information they need about a service or product. Unanswered questions at this point can cause them to exit the sales funnel. For example, they may want to know essential details, like cost and delivery time. A how-to webinar guide can be helpful towards this end.

Evaluation

This stage aims to provide the consumer with additional winning arguments that will sway them towards making a favorable purchasing decision.

A positive way to do this is to incorporate new information from verifiable external sources of information. Instead of simply telling the lead about the product or service first-hand, you give them personal agency and the chance to verify the facts themselves using objective third parties. 

This is where you can dive into greater detail. A webinar featuring a round table discussion gathering objective insights from third-party medical experts can be helpful. In-depth case studies, customer stories, and free product demos are also viable options.

Engagement

The goal here is to get the lead to confirm their decision to make a purchase. This tends to be one of the most challenging points of the sales funnel, as consumers may waver and go back a step to the engagement phase or take two steps back to the discovery stage when they find a competitor.

You want to make sure your brand or business (and its product or service) stays at the forefront of the potential customer’s mind as they weigh the decisions. This requires eliminating any doubts associated with concluding a purchase and the process towards the next stage.

Interactive webinars are helpful to spur engagement. You can invite participants to submit questions via social media in a live stream, for example.

Commitment and Purchase

In this stage, the aim is to get the client to actively conclude the purchase – for example, by inputting their credit card details or completing an order form. They are then fully committed.

Although the lead is ready to purchase at this point, you still have to provide some reassurance that they are making the right choice. A webinar of customer testimonials is a great fit here. You might also include videos covering practical points like pricing guides or product comparison sheets.

Loyalty and Advocacy

In the past, some pros ended the sales funnel after the commitment and purchase stage. However, savvy marketers know that there is one more invaluable phase to consider: a loyal customer can become an informal brand ambassador as they promote and advocate for your products or services. There is even a new type of marketing built around this concept called advocacy marketing.

Webinars allow you to show your customers that you care about them even after they have made a purchase. Build user communities with ongoing educational webinars featuring product tutorials, the latest research, and upcoming innovations. A “frequently asked questions” webinar is another option.

We Help You Implement Digital Marketing in Healthcare

Trust Share Moving Media to help you create webinars for healthcare sales. We are a full-service media company dedicated to helping our clients expand their reach and improve engagement with their target audiences. Using quality crafted content informed by in-depth marketing expertise, we help you improve sales and boost the bottom line.

 Subscribe to our newsletter for more healthcare marketing e-guides. Contact us to collaborate.

The Marketing Minute Podcast – Why Trade Publishers and the Industry Need to Join Hands to Revive Sales in Healthcare

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In this episode, Scott and John discuss:

  • Why Trade Publications are an Invaluable Marketing Tool
  • What Trade Publications provide
  • How to partner with trade publishers to develop quality content that’s visible, targeted, and generates leads for healthcare professionals!