Purchasing and value analysis teams are crucial to health systems’ success. Over the last several years, you’ve faced myriad problems, including shortages, allocations, price gouging and inflation. Through it all, you’ve been tasked with protecting the financial viability of your health system. Like many of your peers, you are probably worried about future mandates to cut costs. You may feel pressured to purchase the cheapest medical supplies, regardless of clinical outcomes. Why does delivering healthcare cost so much?
One of the biggest challenges facing hospitals and health systems is the nursing shortage. U.S. News and World Report recently revealed a gap of roughly 100,000 registered nurses needed across the country1. Many nurses are retiring or leaving the industry, and there aren’t enough coming aboard. As a medical supplies purchaser, have you considered your role in the nursing shortage?
There are many reasons why nurses feel burnt out and leave the industry. According to a survey conducted by Incredible Health in 2022, 34 percent of nurses reported they were very likely to leave their jobs by the end of the year2. Nearly half of those cited burnout and a high stress environment as the primary reason they plan to leave.
In order to keep adequate staffing levels, hospitals have turned to overtime pay, signing bonuses and other tactics to hire and retain nurses. These efforts cost an average 500 bed hospital $17 million in added labor expenses since the pandemic began3. With these other labor costs on the books, where do hospitals look for cost savings to offset the difference? Oftentimes, it falls to the purchasing department to cut costs. While purchasing the cheapest medical supplies available through your group purchasing organization may be tempting, you could be contributing to nursing burnout.
Buying quality products that work as intended may help nurses prevent frustration and burnout.
Connections Between Purchasing and Patient Safety
Your job comes with its fair share of challenges. You deal with strong personalities in vendors, GPOs and clinical teams. Nursing comes with a different set of challenges. These frontline workers deal with a wide swath of the public: from sick and injured patients to worried parents and many others from different social and economic backgrounds.
What supplies do you use most often in a day? What are the repercussions if your pen, keyboard or computer monitor stop working? While each of these can cause an inconvenience, the stakes are much higher for nurses. Cheap medical supplies could compromise patient safety or lead to confrontations with patients. According to MedPage Today, on average, two nurses are physically assaulted every hour4.
Patient Safety
First and foremost, patient safety is the most important priority for nurses. Have you considered how the products you purchase impact nurses and their interactions with patients?
Labels seem like straightforward items. They are just stickers, right? Well, not exactly. The Ford Pinto and the Lexus ES are both cars, but there is a wide gulf between them. Much like the right car for you is likely somewhere in between these extremes, the same goes for supplies like labels. You may not need bells and whistles like labels that warm the nurse’s fingers when applied, but you should expect labels to remain adhered to surfaces.
Comparing labels to cars may seem silly, but consider it from the nurse’s perspective. Labels that fall off could lead to a misdiagnosis, improper treatment or even the wrong medication. Any of these situations has major ramifications. From the inconvenience of having to redraw a sample to expensive litigation for serious issues, the supplies you use can have a significant impact on your health system’s financial health.
Unfortunately, labels aren’t the only product that can cause issues. When phlebotomists use the wrong size tourniquet or forget to remove the bands, patients could suffer nerve damage or even lose a limb. If a specimen cup leaks or biohazard bag breaks on the way to the lab, your clinicians could face expensive and time-consuming remedies. You are in a perfect position to help!
Protecting the Budget, Today and Tomorrow
You and your purchasing peers across the country are under a lot of pressure to manage the budget. You’re constantly tasked with finding cost savings to offset increased expenses elsewhere. Caresfield can help!
We offer a winning blend of quality, price and service to empower you and your purchasing team. We offer labels and specimen collection products that work as expected. Our products may help reduce nursing team stress by maximizing patient safety and comfort.
Working with Nurses so Everybody Wins
The first step towards easing nursing stress and driving down the organization’s financial pressures is connecting with your clinical team to talk about medical supplies. Your chief nursing officer is a suitable place to start. You may learn what medical supplies cause the most stress and which lead to the most negative interactions with patients.
Next, collect samples of the items in need. Whether it’s labels, tourniquets or specimen collection products, having a physical sample helps your vendor understand what you currently use. When paired with pain points from your clinical team, it helps us find the best product for your needs.
From there, Caresfield will perform a cross-reference. For most products, we offer drop-in placements. For labels, this means a superior label that works with your existing hardware with no extra effort on your part. Whether you’re considering labels or specimen collection products, we offer free samples so your clinicians can evaluate items in the field and confirm their quality.
We’re happy to help you through the entire process. When you call or use the live chat on our website, a real person answers. If you have a question or a problem, we’ll connect you with an expert who has helped similar hospitals with the issue. We’ll continue supporting you after you buy our products, to ensure you are getting the best clinical results at the best price.
All you have to do to get started is reach out to our sales team. If you’d like to do more research before reaching out, we have some great information on our blog:
- Simplifying Accurate Comparisons for Labels, Wristbands
- Six Tips for a Headache-Free ID Band and Label Conversion
- Healthcare Supply Chain: The Past, Present and Future with Robert T. Yokl
Success for You, Stability for your Health System
From the moment a patient walks in the door, it takes the entire team to deliver safe and effective care. You play an especially important role: making sure clinicians have the right medical supplies for quality care. A big part of your success is tied to managing costs.
When you give nurses the tools to thrive, they may be less frustrated with their jobs, stay longer with your health system and help decrease overall expenses. This, in turn, will help ease future pressures to save money on supply purchases. You have the power to help change the paradigm, reversing nursing trends through careful spending. It is a win-win for the entire team.
Sources
- The State of the Nation’s Nursing Shortage, Julia Haynes, U.S. News and World Report, https://www.usnews.com/news/health-news/articles/2022-11-01/the-state-of-the-nations-nursing-shortage, accessed Dec. 30, 2022.
- STUDY: 34% of Nurses Plan to Leave their Current Role by the End of 2022, Incredible Health, https://www.incrediblehealth.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/IH-COVID-19-2022-Summary-1.pdf, accessed Dec. 30, 2022.
- PINC AI Data Shows Hospitals Paying $24B More for Labor Amid COVID-19 Pandemic, Premier, https://www.premierinc.com/newsroom/blog/pinc-ai-data-shows-hospitals-paying-24b-more-for-labor-amid-covid-19-pandemic, Accessed Dec. 30, 2022
- Violence Against Nurses Worse Than Ever, Analysis Finds, Sophie Putka, MedPage Today, https://www.medpagetoday.com/special-reports/features/100679, accessed Jan. 4, 2022
