Waste in the Hospital Supply Chain | E. 105

An estimated 40% of expenditure in the supply chain goes to waste. CEO Luká Yancopoulos explains to Jim Cagliostro how Grapevine Technology aims to put the power back into the hands of hospitals.

 

Episode Introduction 

Luká explains how Grapevine can help hospitals save up to 80% on a single line item, how even small healthcare businesses spend six figure sums on the supply chain each year, and how to frame the reality of years of overspending to his clients. He also reveals three key ways that hospitals can lower the expense of their vendor management. 

 

 

Show Topics

 

• The power of building networks

• Supplies are a huge expense in healthcare

• Up to 80% of spend may be waste

• Connecting the source of supply to the end user

• Framing harsh truths on expenditure

• Seeing value every step of the way

• Leadership tip: deliver solutions to real problems

03:12 The power of building networks

Luká said Grapevine can help its clients to save 70-80% on a single line item. 

‘’So Grapevine is working to make it very easy to basically manage your existing network. We've got healthcare businesses. They usually come to us, and they've worked with a handful of suppliers over the years. They think of each of these suppliers as their supplier for blank, fill in the blank, and Grapevine rewrites that. We think they're all your suppliers, they're all your network. Every time you add an item to cart from one of them, let's make sure it's the best price and that your other suppliers that you already trust and know don't have the same exact product at a cheaper price. Oftentimes, they do. We've basically redirected spend from one major distributor to another major distributor, saving the customer or the healthcare business 70%-80% on a single line item. The thing like a Becton Dickinson or a BD catheter or infusion pump or something they buy, and they have a bad habit of buying it from the wrong guy. So we basically let them link all their suppliers with the click of a button to a single screen, read in their current offerings, and tell them where to redirect their spend, acting as a traffic cop if needed.’’

 

05:14 Supplies are a huge expense in healthcare

Luká explained that even small healthcare businesses are spending six figure sums on supplies every year. 

‘’Certain medical specialties get hit harder than others. If you're performing surgery, obviously, you're burning through a lot of supplies, you're using anesthesia, you're using all sorts of things that maybe your average urgent care clinic won't need. So we focus on specific specialties that have a high consumption rate of important and expensive technologies, things like oncology, dermatology, surgery, these sorts of things. Even a small healthcare business is spending six, seven figures on medical supplies and pharmaceuticals, like, a customer that comes to mind, a family-owned dermatology practice in upstate New York, and Rochester, New York is spending $200,000 a year pre-Grapevine on medical supplies. So like the instruments and whatnot, they're using sutures and implants and this and that, and then they're spending another million a year on injectables. Things like lidocaine, fillers