How do materials managers keep infection control practitioners (ICPs), physicians and finance personnel happy?
Granted, that latter goal of keeping everybody happy might be likened to “Mission: Impossible,” according to Al Cook, chief resource officer for St. Francis Medical Center in Monroe, La., and the president of the Association for Healthcare Resource and Materials Management (AHRMM). “But if value is real, the results are often eye-opening to all,” he points out. Money is always an object — and evaluation committees have a constant eye on value and cost. “Price alone is only a part of the equation,” Cook says. “If the product being studied has a failure rate of 1 in 10 uses and the new product has a failure rate of 1 in 100, the difference is measurable and has value. Many product evaluation committees are now changing to value-analysis committees.” Ideally, a new product is evaluated from the clinical perspective of what advantages it offers. “If the new product is less expensive and (from a clinical perspective) provides an equal or enhanced clinical performance, it is a slam dunk tha
