Dan DeLay
Senior Vice President, Supply Chain Analytics, VHA Inc.
The NBA playoffs are underway and let’s be honest, I love this game! But my beloved home team is out, suffering a collapse of epic proportions in the first round. Locally, our superstar, Dirk Nowitzki is getting a lot of bad press and many are placing the blame solely on his shoulders, highlighting the fact that superstar athletes capture a lot of the attention. If a team is successful, everything seems right with the world and the season looks good. However, if the team fails to live up to expectations, every fan becomes a coach and every sportscaster becomes a critic, putting the star player under enormous skepticism. Thankfully, we don’t deal with that kind of scrutiny in the health care industry … but the day may be fast approaching.
Drawing the analogy to the health care world, just who are the superstars? Let’s face it; many would consider doctors to be the superstars in health care. (Although, I also know how important nurses are.) For hospitals, doctors have a huge impact on patient care -- they can also have a huge impact on the hospital’s supply budget. When one doctor demands the right to use specific, expensive medical devices, this may not seem like a big problem. However, when dozens of doctors make the same demands, the whole team, meaning the hospital, can suffer.
To get superstar athletes to perform at their best, it sometimes takes an agent or coach to whisper a motivational thought in their ear, “Hey, get out there and show me some heart, set an example for your teammates.” The same is true with superstar doctors. You have to show them the data that indicates, “Hey, if you keep this up, our hospital will suffer financially, and you won’t have a place to demonstrate your tremendous talent.” Granted, this argument is a little hard to make in towns where the doctor has other acute care facilities to practice…
To help superstar doctors measure their impact on the hospital’s financial and clinical performance, you need to show them how much revenue they bring into the organization, the expenses they generate and their clinical outcomes and then compare them to their colleagues. Power forward or orthopedic surgeon, it doesn’t matter -- no one likes to be told they aren’t the team’s best performer, or that they’re hurting the team. Most doctors will be willing to take some steps to improve their performance, especially when the hospital can demonstrate that the doctor will win something in return.
Once you have this data, you could use it to turn any doctor into a supply chain superstar.
