June 22, 2023 – Advantus Health Partners works to ensure clinical validation of key products and services, waste reduction and standardization of major product categories as solutions beyond traditional supply chain GPO management. Launched in 2021 by Cincinnati-based Bon Secours Mercy Health, one of the 20 largest health systems in the U.S., Advantus is led by healthcare professionals and providers with an aim to modernize and create more efficient operations between the supply chain and clinical sides.
Dr. Jimmy Chung is its chief medical officer. “The big crisis in healthcare is that current spending is unsustainable,” Dr. Chung said. “The U.S. spends twice what similar countries spend on healthcare, and much of that has to do with waste and variability in how we practice in the U.S. and the resources we utilize in supply chain.”
To help address this crisis, one business model for Advantus reduces the unnecessary variability in clinical care delivery.
As Dr. Chung puts it, if there are 20 different vendors for orthopedic implants at a hospital, then that’s 20 different ways of doing the surgery, and that leads to mistakes and errors that could harm the patient, while creating operational inefficiency and waste.
He has studied data over the past 10 years that suggests there are opportunities to standardize healthcare purchasing to reduce this variability, and patient risk and supply chain can become a strategic driver in it, playing a critical role in patient outcomes.
Advantus delivers products that have been vetted for quality and value, but physician preference isn’t a part of the equation. Clear expectations are set with physicians that their feedback will be used when procuring products, but not on a preference basis.
Read more in the latest issue of Journal of Healthcare Contracting.