Key Differences
Much the past supply chain focus has been to drive performance improvement through purchase cost reductions such as volume purchases,
group contracts, and product standardization. Not surprisingly, acute-care providers have been actively engaged in outcomes benchmarking
using financial measures based on supply expense such as average supply expense per discharge and supply expense as a percentage of
revenue. Using these data, hospitals have used benchmark gap analyses to identify price improvements and to produce information for
improved contract performance. In the past, group purchasing organizations, distributors, and benchmarking consulting firms have
developed and disseminated benchmarking services to their partners and clients to provide regional and national supply expense
comparisons. While these efforts have established a good foundation, most of the previous efforts had a "Control Perspective" to
benchmarking. SCMetrix™ goes beyond the traditional perspective and considers a strategic perspective to performance measurement by
identifying supply chain practices and capabilities for further investment and development.
How does SCMetrix™ compare to other benchmarking approaches?
- SCMetrix™ adopts
AHRMM - HFMA's supply expense definition to guarantee valid and reliable comparisons between hospitals.
- Most financial metrics rely on a facility-wide adjustment factor such as bed size and patient acuity to adjust supply costs. SCMetrix™ profiles a hospital's supply chain and creates comparison groups based on supply chain structures and best practice implementations.
- Not all supply chains have the same structure. SCMetrix™ captures an organization's supply chain structure. Along with financial and operational metrics, SCMetrix™ benchmarking hospitals can learn how other hospitals with similar supply chain structures perform on financial results and key operational indicators.
- Everyday hospitals work to improve their internal supply chains through new and improved practices such as value analysis teams, vendor site policies, performance measurement systems, and other change initiatives. SCMetrix™'s methodology measures a hospital's degree of practice implementation and promotes benchmarking against hospitals of similar degrees of practice implementation.
- SCMetrix™ recognizes the importance of trading partner's performance in realizing competitive supply chain performance. Measures of trading partner's relationship, delivery, and transformation competency are evaluated by supply chain professionals and department/service line managers.
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SCMetrix™ offers a number of competitive and unique features including:
- Participating hospitals are offered a "No Charge Subscription" through financial support provided by AHRMM and ASU.
- Hospital Systems and IDNs have the flexibility to benchmark their hospitals as a separate comparison group.
- Totally Web-Based Benchmarking Tool that does not require the user to install any hardware or additional software.
- State-of-the-Art Web-Based Dashboarding Tool based on the Corda software and the application of extensive visualization research to the design of the dashboard.
- Multiple Subscribers from each hospital can establish dashboarding accounts and perform independent analysis.
- Scalable, Secure, Reliable architecture for confidential data entry and dashboards developed and maintained by the University Technology Office at Arizona State University.
- Strict Security Standards and User Authentication based on ASU's guest account and password system and security system.
- Downloadable Comparative Metrics and Dashboards as Excel and Adobe Acrobat files for use in your organization's further supply chain analysis.
- User-Friendly Training System including webinars and on-line tutorials.
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