The ambulatory surgery center (ASC) industry is growing exponentially due to improved surgical capabilities and changing reimbursement incentives. As ASCs grow, the ASC supply chain is growing in complexity. This makes supply chain data essential in making sound decisions.
During a November webinar hosted by Becker's ASC Review and sponsored by Cardinal Health, Pete Bennett, senior vice president of global planning and supply chain at Cardinal Health, and Robert Mayhew, director of supply chain at Revo Health, discussed trends and best practices in supply chain systems integration and the use of data and analytics in strategic plans.
Three key insights were:
- Accurate data is at the heart of sound ASC supply chain management. This includes foundational product data, financial data and supply chain data. Supply chain data, in turn, includes data about lead times, replenishment cycles, manufacturing and procurement variations and risk mitigation strategies. "Accurate data helps your ability to predict and project potential disruptions and areas of opportunity," Mr. Bennett said.
Although there are technology solutions that aid providers in managing their supply chains based on data, many of those solutions rely on a univariant approach — looking at only one data source or one data variable. Solutions that take a multivariant approach and consider multiple inputs from manufacturers, freight forwarders and logistics organizations, as well as macroeconomic inputs such as inflation, enable more precise estimates and thus provide more accurate information. That information can then be fed into ASCs' forecasts and demand plans. - ASCs need specialized supply chain management resources. ASCs face similar supply chain challenges as acute care providers, but unlike hospitals, ASCs do not have teams of dedicated supply chain professionals with sophisticated resources. Instead, ASC materials and supply chain managers typically wear many hats, including scheduling cases, washing instruments and sourcing gloves.
Revo Health, a management services organization, supports ASCs by taking elements of the acute care supply chain that have been proven to be successful and right-sizing them to the ASC. From that perspective, Mr. Mayhew said that to embed the same level of quality into their supply chains, ASCs need a dedicated focus on data management, a dedicated contracts management team and a defined nomenclature for their item master. - Investing in the right data and analytics tools can help ASCs build resilient supply chains. Resiliency entails shifting a business from being reactive to being proactive, a concept that applies to the ASC supply chain. ASCs can realize that concept by investing in tools and platforms that enable advanced planning through demand-sensing and forecasting — for example, by tracking how elective surgery patterns evolve across the country, which would allow them to stock up on inventory that suits those patterns.
Other capabilities that support supply chain resiliency include a capability to monitor product availability that a facility has access to or that may indicate a need to diversify supply sources; visibility of upstream and downstream supply chain risk and capacity to accommodate key performance indicators around inventory levels/stockouts and business continuity. To measure the success of their activities, supply chain leaders can then deploy metrics such as forecast accuracy and bias, service level, delivery metrics, inventory targets, backorders and schedule and requirement attainment.
"We're dealing in an environment where reimbursement is declining and costs are increasing, so we have to be able to understand what our spend is by procedure and surgeon level, to be able to have success," Mr. Mayhew said, noting that investing in data analytics that can capture such data should be a top priority for ASCs.
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