Procurement Services coordinates the purchase of supplies, equipment and professional services to assure cost-efficiency as UI Health Care provides the highest quality, state-of-the-art care environment.
Vendors interested in working with UI Health Care coordinate all of their bidding, negotiation, sales, and supply activities through Procurement Services.
UI Health Care participates in group purchasing efforts to achieve optimum pricing and delivery of goods and services.
Goals
The UI Health Care 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 Health Care 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 Health Care operating margins, we hope to assist in the increase of capital reserves. Increases in these reserves will enable UI Health Care 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 approach to develop structures and parallel processes for procurement, knowledge management, supply chain management, and revenue enhancement services.
Consolidation and coordination of all procurement activities related to supplies, equipment, and professional services to maximize the value received by UI Health Care.
Strategic Partnership
Key to re-engineering the purchasing process is the formation of a:
University of Iowa/UI Health Care Strategic Procurement Partnership
Nine Guiding Principles will form the basis of this partnership:
The University of Iowa Purchasing Department and UI Health Care 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 Health Care 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.
