Valify Solutions Group finds savings
Purchased services—contracts that cover everything from snow removal to groundskeeping to laundry—often account for as much as 45% of a hospital facility’s non-labor expense.
Much of that spend is wasted on redundancies and overlooked areas for savings.
Given this hefty investment, Valify Solutions Group (VSG) has made it its mission to help HealthTrust members streamline and reduce their purchased services spend. VSG utilizes two important tools to ensure members are getting the best rates: benchmarking technology and expert knowledge of national and regional markets.
Digging deep to find savings
“Purchased services are highly complex. Identifying a service level unit of measure can be tough because it varies by category,” says Andy Motz, AVP for Custom Sourcing at VSG. “Valify has been strictly dedicated to purchased services and focused on providing insight and actionable opportunities in that area of spend, so our subject matter expertise positions us well to best help our customers.”
The Valify technology tool takes members’ accounts payable spend and classifies that information into more than 1,300 unique categories, says Motz. “Once we get an understanding of where their dollars are going, then we can help them set priorities for standardizing or consolidating suppliers where applicable,” Motz adds. “That usually leads to cost savings.”
To dig even deeper, VSG experts use high-level bench-marking through the Valify technology tool. Benchmarking shows members where their costs may be high or if they’re in the same ballpark compared to other hospitals of similar size within the same region.
“We compare their spend in a specific category to different KPIs, such as cost per patient bed or cost per square footage,” Motz explains. “If we see them in anything better than 50th percentile, they’re probably doing OK as far as their expenses go. But when we get to the 80th percentile or 90th percentile, that’s a quick indicator for us that there is a savings opportunity for those hospitals.”
Making positive changes
Once the opportunities have been identified, members can use the contracts that are part of VSG’s purchased services portfolio, Motz says. “Our members can utilize those contracts to get the best pricing and best terms and conditions, including turnaround times and failure-to-supply clauses.”
VSG experts can also work with members to create custom or local agreements with vendors if necessary. “If they need a service that’s not covered by one of our existing GPO contracts, then we’ll work with them to create a local contract,” he adds.
“The Market Share module within the Valify technology tool empowers all of our end users by putting that data at their fingertips,” shares Wilson. It is designed to help hospitals find alternative vendors and to identify suppliers with the best pricing and terms and conditions.
When members utilize the Market Share module in conjunction with the benchmarking tools and other VSG modules, they get the deepest benefits. “That’s where you really enrich the data,” Wilson says.
Evolving to meet members’ needs
Valify is constantly being enriched with new modules to meet the changing priorities of members. For example, “Many health systems are beginning to think differently about how they procure services and supplies, and the way they impact their communities. As a result, they’re focusing on driving as much volume as they can through historically economically disadvantaged businesses,” Wilson explains. To accommodate this priority, Valify recently launched a new diversity module that flags diverse suppliers, so members with this sourcing priority can easily identify those opportunities.
“Valify’s entire technology is really designed to help manage the lifecycle of your purchased services spend from identifying opportunities to automated monitoring that happens after you sign onto a new contract,” she says.
Drive value for your organization in purchased services by contacting the Valify team today at 972.963.5130 or info@valifysolutionsgroup.com.
Share Email Purchased Services, Q2 2022, Valify Solutions
