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Effective procurement activity relies on the ability to demonstrate integrity, transparency and value-for-money, whilst ensuring ‘best value’ outcomes in goods, services and equipment.
In the current environment of fiscal uncertainty, hospitals (alongside other institutions) are under increasing pressure to further streamline and automate their procurement processes whilst maintaining quality and value-for money. Ensuring that there are sufficient competent staff to deal with and be engaged with procurement activities is a vital element of this and increasingly, medical and clinical staff can have a key part to play given their first-hand knowledge of the medical and diagnostic equipment. Creating a clear procurement strategy which effectively balances clinical knowledge with purchasing expertise is still something which many Australian hospitals are striving to achieve.
Dr Simon Woods, Executive Director of Medical Service at Cabrini Health in Victoria joined us recently to discuss the merits of clinical involvement and technology in procurement processes.
Dr Woods manages 1300 clinicians at Cabrini Health. His role with respect to procurement is to assist in managing the tension between the efficiencies of limiting inventory, leveraging volume and standardising practice, with the desires of clinicians for autonomy and access to a wide range of products.
“Our clinicians are best placed to advise on trends, clinical efficacy and whether there are genuine differences between product offerings.
Partnering with clinicians in the procurement process produces stronger engagement than when it is seen as happening remote to them”, says Dr Woods.
On the role of technology in procurement, Dr Woods thinks that “live inventory and RFID tracking show significant promise in terms of efficiency, reliability and cost accounting, but our own experience is that we are not there yet”.
Dr Woods will be speaking at the upcoming National Hospital Procurement conference, taking place on 24th-25th July in Sydney, on the topic “Time Efficient and Appropriate Clinical Engagement : Balancing Corporate and Clinical Governance”.
Dr Woods will be speaking at the upcoming National Hospital Procurement conference, taking place on 24th-25th July in Sydney, on the topic “Time Efficient and Appropriate Clinical Engagement : Balancing Corporate and Clinical Governance”.
Join Dr Woods and many other industry professionals at this highly anticipated industry annual gathering, to hear about ideas and inspiration on how we can effectively improve clinical involvement in hospital procurement processes. For more information about the details event program and to register, please visit the National Hospital Procurement conference website.
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