SCMetrix

About

Despite the recognized importance of managing the healthcare supply chain, considerable improvements need to be made throughout the industry over the next several years. Through a collaborative partnership, AHRMM and the W. P. Carey School of Business at Arizona State University offer hospitals a benchmarking and performance measurement tool, SCMetrix™. Recognizing that hospitals have had past experience with external benchmarking, SCMetrix™ vision is to move the industry beyond results-oriented financial metric benchmarking to a more comprehensive performance measurement and benchmarking industry standard that recognizes the importance of measuring value drivers and implementation of best practices in supply chain operations.

Why health care supply chains need a new benchmarking solution?

Industry-accepted benchmarks are centered on financial metrics that lag performance and provide few insights on what factors contributed to either poor or superior performance.
Most benchmarking solutions focus more on acquisition prices rather than total delivered supply costs.
Financial metrics does not provide "line of sight" on what specific actions hospitals can take to improve their supply chain performance.
Few benchmarking solutions allow comparison of supply chain performance outside group purchasing membership organizations.
Hospitals need statistical evidence that supply chain investments do in fact reduce supply costs and improve other supply chain value drivers.

At the core of AHRMM-ASU collaboration is the shared vision that the healthcare industry needs to develop consistent, reliable, actionable, and credible measures to ensure accurate comparisons and reporting of financial and other supply chain measures. Based on state-of-the-art research methodologies and extensive industry collaboration, SCMetrix™ recognizes the importance of measuring a hospital's supply chain managerial practices and strategic capabilities. As not all hospitals have the same decision making structures in the supply chain area, SCMetrix™ identifies different types of supply chain structures. Without a comparative analysis of a hospital's investment in supply chain practices and capabilities, hospitals cannot fully identify the specific managerial practices of the top performers, and identify specific areas for focusing managerial attention and financial resources to improve and sustain supply chain performance over time.

Launching in Fall 2007, participating hospitals are offered a "no fee" subscription through financial support provided by AHRMM and ASU. To become a fully active benchmarking organization requires a hospital to appoint a site administrator to guide the data collection process and to guarantee that all hospital participants provide timely and accurate data for evaluating their hospital's supply chain practices and capabilities.