Strategic Initiatives in Healthcare (SIH) Announces Innovative Service for Hospitals & Expense Management Professionals
SIH announces Resource Matching, the only service of it's kind in healthcare, matching expense management professionals to the true needs of individual providers. This unique service is unheard of in the industry and will transform traditional search & recruitment to an optimal level.
Seattle, WA (PRWEB) June 14, 2004
"Because hospital expenses and dramatic increases in health insurance are causing a crisis of cost in healthcare, providers need to reconsider the traditional methods of controlling expenses", says Joe Colonna, CEO of SIH, a Seattle-based firm specializing in expense management.
SIH's service will help to address a pressing need in the industry, the need to strengthen the supply chain and materials management functions in healthcare. According to a 2002 research study by one of the nationÂ’s largest volume purchasing companies for hospitals, some healthcare systems could realize 8-14 percent in supply cost savings. Since supplies represent 20-25 percent of all hospital expenditures, better management of these expenses could produce astronomical savings for hospitals. To assist providers with these efforts, SIH has developed a service which will recruit supply chain and materials management professionals for providers with the specific characteristics, skills set, and knowledge to match current and future needs of the organization.
SIH believes that the inefficiencies in hospital expense management are NOT attributable to incompetence on the part of hospital materials management professionals. According to Colonna, "These individuals have rarely received the specialized education and training to enable them to expand their role to keep pace with the rapid increases in non-labor expenses. At the same time, their ability to assume a leadership role in expense management has been limited by several critical factors; time, adequate staffing levels, and resistance from department managers who control large portions of hospital budgets. Our services will help providers to address all of these issues."
According to Colonna, SIH is not the first to identify this need. In his book, The Health Care Value Chain Dr. Lawton R. Burns, (Professor of Health Care Systems in the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania and Director of the Wharton Center for Health Management and Economics) points out that the role of hospital materials managers may be invisible and undervalued. Dr. Burns states, "Hospitals must realize they are missing the opportunity to control and manage their non-labor expenses by not enhancing their supply chain and materials management efforts."
Colonna added, "This service is not contracted management for supply chain and materials management. To paraphrase Jim Collins comments in his book, Good To Great, it is about getting the right people on the bus, a process which can be assured by using our team of true experts."
Despite the current crisis of cost in healthcare, unlike other industries, hospitals have failed to adequately transform their expense management efforts from a disjointed approach to a coordinated one using organization-wide processes. SIH plans to change that with services such as Resource Matching.
Strategic Initiatives In Healthcare is a consulting firm devoted exclusively to all aspects of expense control and management for healthcare providers. For more information on expense management in healthcare or to arrange an interview with Mr. Colonna, contact Matt Gyulay at mgyulay@sihealthcare. com 1-877-717-7444.
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