Healthcare Supply Chain Technology Powers Vital Feedback Loop

If they ever reboot the old television series, Marcus Welby, MD, there's at least one episode title that could be recycled for the high-tech age: "Feedback."

Doctors today get a lot more feedback than they used to. The public rates them on the Web. Payers scrutinize their charges and make controversial adjustments in reimbursement. And power software evaluates their performance through a vast array of analytical algorithms.

The good news for doctors is that they're not the only targets of all this feedback. Now the very technologies and products they use are being analyzed as never before.

The result is lower costs and higher-quality outcomes that are driving providers to use the best and most cost-effective solutions.

Supply-chain executives gathering for the annual meeting of the Association for Healthcare Resource and Materials Management (AHRMM), August 5–8 in San Antonio, TX are championing these efforts throughout healthcare.

One such executive is Joe Arruda, vice president of supply operations at Indiana University Health. "A lot of things that we've been doing at IU Health have been really around providing better visibility in how products are utilized," Arruda says. "We work very closely with our surgeons to show them market share, product shifts, cost by procedure, [and cost] by physician, and it really enlightens them."