Challenges: Mid-Size Healthcare System, Cumbersome Manual Processes
As a leader in healthcare procurement software, Procurement Partners has honed our service by combining human expertise with expert software, valuing responsiveness and an attentive ear to the needs of our ever-growing client base. Our automated solutions comprehensively save money through complete visibility and control over spend management, implementing leading digital automation practices that save valuable staff time.
A Florida-based medical-center system focused on Medicaid recipients is among our valued customers who enjoy up to 40 percent time savings and 95 percent contract compliance through Procurement Partners’ Hybrent platform’s easy-to-use portal and automated solutions.
This medical system operates in eight locations that deliver services to seniors and Medicare patients. The organization boasts nearly 700 primary care doctors and specialty physicians, and health and wellness services that include pharmacies, labs, dental care, eye care, and imaging. A Medicare Advantage partner, it cares for more than 42,000 patients every year.
“We’re a one-stop shop for senior healthcare needs,” says the organization’s Director of Procurement. “We focus on both the physical and mental health of the senior community.”
To support this wide range of services, which also includes centers for exercise and socializing, this healthcare system has procurement challenges that touch on both scale, complexity, sourcing, pricing, visibility, and accountability. For a time, it relied on time-consuming manual procurement procedures to meet the needs of its facilities.
“We’d receive the order from one of the facilities, scrub the order and approve, enter it into the system, create the purchase order, email the purchase order, then get a confirmation that from the vendor that they got the order,” the procurement director explains. “But we had no way to track the order. We would wait for the order to come in without truly knowing if it was being filled or when it would arrive.”
This kind of manual procurement process leads to uncertainty, high costs in time and effort, and a lack of transparency that can impact the bottom line. For an organization such as this, with values firmly focused on personalized patient care, cumbersome processes drain cashflow, tie up valuable employee time, and take resources away from operations. The need to optimize was clear.
Solutions: P2P Automation Flexibility, Transparency, and Ease of Training
Company leadership knew there was room for streamlining and reducing inefficiencies in its procure-to-pay processes. They also knew it would be prudent to take their time and select carefully from among the automation software solutions available in the marketplace.
“We looked at different supply chain software, and none really fit us,” the procurement director explains. “Some software was too expensive. Another wasn’t healthcare-focused, and we didn’t feel that they were ready for a medical-use rollout.”
The organization was also moving to a new accounting system and needed its eProcurement to have integration capacity with payment process and processing invoices. Most of all, it had to be a system that was easy to implement and use every day.
“We had some key features we wanted,” the director says. “It had to be user-friendly. People are accustomed to buying things on Amazon, and we wanted that type of feeling with the software we chose.”
After a bit of searching, his team was introduced to Hybrent. “We researched it and kind of fell in love with the product,” he says. “It caters to the healthcare industry, which is key. Hybrent spoke our language.”
With a procure-to-pay system designed to meet the specific needs of procurement in the healthcare sphere, the healthcare system was quickly able to take advantage of what Hybrent has to offer, including freedom to buy from the suppliers of their choice.
A Procurement Partners team member traveled to the company to train the procurement team and the company’s super-users, MIS team, and the organization’s own internal trainers during implementation.
“It worked great,” the director says. “The first team we introduced the system to was diagnostics. We brought in radiologists to learn a purchasing system—and they got it right away.”
Results: Responsive, Accountable, and Efficient Healthcare Procurement
The healthcare organization’s team has embraced Procurement Partner’s procure-to-pay automated solution and its easy-to-use features, which promote cost savings and risk management and streamline workflow processes.
“With Hybrent it’s night and day,” the director adds. “Orders arrive, we scrub them, place the order for all items and all vendors via Hybrent, then hit the submit button. Done. And now we have confirmation that orders are received, then they ship, and the tracking numbers.”
One of his goals is to support his organization’s facilities with what they need before they need it. He’s able to do this with the “par levels” feature, which automates purchase orders based on supply levels set for each specific facility.
“I’m monitoring inventory from afar and making sure each facility is stocked with what they need,” he explains. “There’s a lot of buy-in from the field because they no longer have to place orders for specific items. The system does it. Hybrent gives me that flexibility, transparency, and control over supplies.”
Because Hybrent makes it easy to order from several different suppliers and keep close track of those orders in real time, the company has also weathered disruptions in supply chains. And crucially, Hybrent has made invoice processing and accounts payable easy.
“Invoices are in the system, and we can three-way match and process with no problem,” the director says. “The AP team no longer has to re-key everything because the information is already in Hybrent, which saves them a lot of time. All these controls have made us a much better purchasing group.”
He also cites the visibility Procurement Partners data and reporting solutions afford into finances and budgeting.
“It’s easy for me to run reports and analyze the information with the finance team,” he says. “If there’s a sudden spike in spending, we can dig into why it occurred and where. We have visibility we haven’t had before. The biggest benefit is the simplicity of the system. The system is working fantastically.”
For an organization with the scope and complexity of this medical center system, eProcurement solutions such as Procurement Partners’ produce time savings and cost savings, bring together and streamline purchasing and finance functions, and enable professionals to keep focus on their caregiving mission. Easy-to-implement, these automation solutions from pricing to purchase orders to invoice processing streamline back-office functions, alleviate bottlenecks, facilitate better decision-making, and positively impact the bottom line.
About Procurement Partners
Procurement Partners provides the only healthcare-focused procurement, inventory management, and AP automation platform for administrators and clinical providers across the continuum of care. Procurement Partners procure-to-pay solutions maximize financial health and staff well-being, streamlining and redirecting time toward patient and resident care. Procurement Partners offers the only all-in-one procure-to-pay platforms that provide the freedom to buy from any supplier, through any GPO contracts, with open integration to any financial and other operational systems.