Procurement Services coordinates the purchase of supplies, equipment and professional services to assure cost-efficiency as University of Iowa Hospitals & Clinics provides the highest quality, state-of-the-art care environment.
Vendors interested in working with UI Hospitals & Clinics coordinate all of their bidding, negotiation, sales, and supply activities through Procurement Services.
UI Hospitals & Clinics participates in group purchasing efforts to achieve optimum pricing and delivery of goods and services.
Goals
The University of Iowa Hospitals & Clinics Department of Procurement Services shall serve its customer groups and hospital administration with two defining goals around which, all projects and efforts shall focus:
Enhancing and improving the patient experience while at the same time, increasing the UI Hospitals & Clinics operating margin. Whether through "hard savings," "soft savings," or revenue enhancement and creation, we will always define our success by our ability to increase the operating margin.
Through increases in UI Hospitals & Clinics operating margins, we hope to assist in the increase of capital reserves. Increases in these reserves will enable UI Hospitals & Clinics to continue the cycle of improvement and enhancement of the patient experience.
Purpose and Mission
Develop a core procurement team to change the "buying culture" and facilitate:
Enhancement of the patient experience by providing the highest quality, state-of-the-art health care environment in the most cost-efficient manner.
Creation of an innovative, incremental, clinically-specific approachto develop structures and parallel processes for procurement, knowledgemanagement, supply chain management, and revenue enhancement services.
Consolidation and coordination of all procurement activities relatedto supplies, equipment, and professional services to maximize the value received by University of Iowa Hospitals & Clinics.
Strategic Partnership
Key to re-engineering the purchasing process is the formation of a:
University of Iowa/UI Hospitals & Clinics Strategic Procurement Partnership
Nine Guiding Principles will form the basis of this partnership:
The University of Iowa Purchasing Department and UI Hospitals & Clinics Purchasing Services Department have collaborated to form a Strategic Procurement Partnership, which is fostered through the use of shared resources, shared contracts and group purchasing efforts to achieve synergy in the procurement process.
The procurement and supply chain management functions for UI Hospitals & Clinics are centralized in a single hospital department focused on enhancing patient care and optimizing the use of institutional resources.
All products and services are obtained through Novation, UHC, or hospital/university contracts when possible and in our best interest.
The procurement and distribution processes ensure the required items are available at the point-of-care when they are needed.
The purchasing function is supported by a state-of-the-art purchasing and inventory control information system, which provides immediate access to data related to utilization and pricing to support high quality clinical and business decisions.
Automation of the procurement cycle from order to payment is maximized through the use of electronic interfaces such as Marketplace@Novation.
The use of electronic technologies (Omnicell, barcoding, etc.) for the acquisition of commodity items is maximized so that the need for human intervention is minimized.
Interactions between hospital staff and vendors are appropriate and support the mission of the organization.
Understand "total cost" as a balance of: activity, product price, and space, striving to have the right item available at the right time, for the right price.
