10 minute read
Value Analysis Team Leadership
Value Analysis Teams
Value Analysis Team Leadership
While we are all looking for leadership in our value analysis team leaders, what do these characteristics really look like in the real world? I think Dr. David G. Javitch, an organizational psychologist, got it right when he identified these nine basic leadership characteristics that are essential for your value analysis team(s) to succeed:
2. Mission: Do your VA leaders know what their mission is or are they making it up as they go along? I know that we have all experienced the frustration of having a team leader who is leading by the seat of their pants instead of taking control of their VA team. This doesn’t happen when a VA team leader understands that their mission is to guide, coach and support their team members in their search for lower cost alternatives to what they are buying now. It doesn’t get any simpler
than this!
Vision:
Vision is the ability to see the big picture and how a value analysis team fits into your healthcare organization and what the team will look like as it fulfills its mission. Without this vision, it will be hard for team members to understand why their VA team is important and to be willing to actively participate in the team’s tasks and activities without any compensation.
Value Analysis Teams
3.
Competency:
VA leaders must be seen by their members as if they know what they are doing. They can’t “wing it” and hope nobody notices. They need to understand team dynamics and how to manage by persuasion, influence and example. Otherwise, it will be difficult for team members to respect, admire and follow such a VA leader no matter what their credentials say they have achieved in their own discipline.
4.
Goals:
If a VA leader doesn’t set qualitative and quantitative goals for their VA team, then
how do they measure their team’s success? Javitch tells us that “Goals need to be operational; that is specific and measurable. If your output and results can’t be readily measured, then it will be difficult to know if you have achieved your purpose.” It would be counterproductive to do otherwise!
5.
Team Builder:
No leader ever succeeds without a strong team. Therefore, leaders have the rare ability to identify, attract and select outstanding individuals who will make their team stronger. After building their team, they then work on motivating the team to reach the highest level of performance.
6.
Communication Skills: Communicating at value analysis team meetings isn’t enough. Team leaders need to keep in touch between meetings by e-mail, voicemail, and in-person meetings to make sure that their team members’ projects are on time, on budget and on target. To do less is a failure to communicate effectively in a just-in-time manner to get your VA team’s important work done.
Interpersonal Skills:
A team leader who is open, easy going and accessible is more likely to build rapport with their team members. Those qualities contribute to team members wanting to interact with their leader to resolve issues without fearing retribution or embarrassment. It’s all about feeling comfortable with your team leader who has your best interest at heart.
Value Analysis Teams
8.
Can Do Attitude:
Nothing builds success, like success! That’s why team leaders need to see every problem as an opportunity, every roadblock as a minor setback and every challenge as just another door to pass through. By doing so, they can build momentum to meet the goals and objectives they have set out for their VA team in a timely manner –over and over again!
9.
Inspiration:
Team leaders need to inspire their team members by their words and actions. They need to be advisors, counselors and even
cheerleaders when the situation calls for it. Above all, team leaders must encourage their team members to believe that their projects are doable and manageable to counteract pessimistic thinking about project outcomes. That’s why a team leader’s words and actions can greatly influence the performance of any VA team.
The basic message here is that value analysis team leaders need specific skill sets to be successful in managing, maturing and maximizing their value analysis team’s efforts. If the selection of your team leaders is left to chance, then your hospital, system or IDN won’t obtain the highest level of performance that you are looking for in your value analysis teams. So when you are selecting your team leaders, look for these nine essential leadership characteristics that your team leaders must have if they are to succeed in managing your VA teams.
Value Analysis Analytics
Breakthrough Savings on Demand
The promise of value analysis analytics to up your savings game
Your healthcare organization is datarich, but most supply chain professionals don’t optimize the use of their hospital, system or IDN’s data to pinpoint, with
certainty, where their best value analysis savings opportunities reside. Historically, supply chain management hasn’t been interested in value analysis analytics since their price and standardization savings have been so robust over the years.
So, they haven’t had the need to analyze their savings beyond price and standardization. Technology investment has lagged behind at most supply chain operations, so the tools to analyze data have been missing.
The Law of Diminishing Returns
Yet, we don’t believe there is a supply chain manager in the country today who can say that their price and standardization savings is even keeping pace with inflation. The law of diminishing returns has finally arrived in supply chain circles, where even with gargantuan efforts your hospital, system or IDN will be unable to increase your savings yield beyond a certain point. These are just the hard facts we must accept as reality in today’s healthcare supply chain environment. Do not be discouraged by this information, there is a whole new world of supply expense savings
Value Analysis Analytics
available to your hospital, system or IDN. That is the promise of value analysis analytics to up your value analysis game: The tool of choice to identify your best value analysis savings opportunities.
Value Analysis Analytics
Value analysis professionals can use value analysis analytics in many ways to improve their study outcomes (cost and quality), uncover supply chain inefficiencies, and improve your healthcare organization’s bottom line. More importantly, they can have a steady stream of new savings opportunities for their value analysis team(s) to
(value analysis) analytics as “the ex
tackle instead of running out of steam for the lack of new projects.
However, these feats of legerdemain can’t be accomplished without a digital data warehouse. This is because material management information systems are transactional in nature and aren’t built to analyze the millions of bits of data that flow through your supply chain department
terms, is that if you organize your supformance against your own historical savings opportunities beyond price
and financials annually. On the other hand, value analysis analytics software can sift, sort and extract from your purchasing and financial data unfavorable trends, utilization misalignments and anomalies in your supply streams.
Yet, software alone isn’t enough for you to take full advantage of the power of value analysis analytics. You will need to change your organiza
Definition
Value Analysis Analytics
Thomas H. Davenport, the author of Competing on Analytics, describes tensive use of data, statistical and quantitative analysis, explanatory and predictive models, and fact-based management to drive decision and actions.”
What Davenport is saying, in layman’s ply spend into standardized descriptive categories (e.g. intravascular sets, dressing, office supplies, Oxisensors, transcription services, etc.) and then measure these same products, services and technologies’ activity-based perstandards or that of your peers, your
tional mindset from a price orientation to utiliza
will quickly materialize before your very eyes.
tion awareness to receive the full benefits of this breakthroush savings on demand concept.
Value Analysis Analytics
Change of Mindset
For decades, supply chain and value analysis professionals have been focusing their savings efforts on reducing their prices and maximizing their standardization of the products, services and technologies that they have been buying. The advent of GPOs has made this chore even easier. Since your GPOs package savings opportunities is in the form of contracts, your healthcare organization only needs to evaluate and select the best GPO offering that meets your exact requirements. It’s fast, easy, and a somewhat straightforward process.
Unfortunately, this universal best practice has embedded price, above all else, into all of your value analysis team’s conversations to the exclusion of other contributing cost factors. This is one of the biggest challenges we find when we are facilitating value analysis teams: changing team members’ mindsets from a price orientation to utilization awareness.
One of the reasons for this phetake the path of least resistance nomenon is that it is relatively easy to when searching for new savings determine “best price” from competing opportunities. It is just easier to do vendors, GPO contracts or local so!” sources, whereas it is much harder to uncover utilization misalignments that are hidden from your view. Value analysis team members take the path of least resistance when searching for new savings opportunities. It is just easier to do so! This is the mindset that needs to change if your hospital, system or IDN is to take full advantage of the power of value analysis analytics. Since the data along with analysis will lead you to robust savings opportunities, you will still need to change your healthcare organization’s culture and focus on price to adopt a new philosophy of reducing your total cost from acquisition to disposition. As Sherlock Holmes would say, “It’s elementary my dear Watson, you can’t have one without the other.”
Value Analysis Analytics
New Healthcare Economy
Healthcare organizations are under tremendous pressure to control their cost and improve their quality while maintaining their market share. The ability to collect, analyze and act on the data that is stored in your digital data warehouse is paramount for supply chain and value analysis professionals in the new healthcare econ
omy.
It is no longer good enough to obtain the best price for the commodities you are buying. It is now mission critical for you to control all of your supply chain expense categories, from point of entry into your supply streams to their exit from your healthcare organization.
To accomplish this worthy goal, supply chain and value analysis professionals will need to employ value analysis analytics as the first line of defense against excess costs in supply chain expenses. It is necessary to change behaviors that are contributing to these excesses and, most importantly, cultivate a culture of “zero waste” to ensure that your department heads and managers don’t return to their old habits. Once you have achieved these three milestones, you will fulfill the promise of value analysis analytics to up your savings game.
There is nowhere else to go for savings — not even price or standardization can meet the threshold necessary to control your supply costs in the new healthcare economy we live and work in.
BREAKTHROUGH GAME CH BREAKTHROUGH GAME CH ANGING ANGING BOOK IS YOURS FOR FREE! BOOK IS YOURS FOR FREE!
THE FUTURE OF SUPPLY CHAIN MANAGEMENT IS ALL ABOUT UTILIZATION!
BECOME A SAVINGS MAGNET
Read this book and in a few weeks save more money than you have in years! Sound unbelievable?
Robert T. Yokl and Robert W. Yokl, healthcare’s leading authorities in Supply Utilization Management, have helped hundreds of hospitals, healthcare systems and integrated delivery networks to save close to a half billion dollars by employing the same utilization management strategies, tactics and techniques that they will teach you in this book.
Understand why you are slowly but surely running out of price savings Learn why utilization management is more important than ever before Hear why a new discipline of utilization management is on the horizon Review 8 categories of utilization misalignments that cost you money Know why value analysis analytics is the new science of savings Grasp the worth of the value analysis/utilization management connection
