This post is an accompaniment to Power Supply's Expert Series TM where Kermit CEO Rich Palarea serves as the Implant Spend Management Expert. The original Power Supply Expert Series post can be found on Power Supply's LinkedIn.
In our first two entries on the challenges of implant spend management, we discussed the importance of physician preference and what that means for implant savings, as well as issues surrounding non-contracted items.
The first entry covered how surgeons usually have a vendor preference for implants they use in surgery and why that preference is important to maintain while still saving money.
The second entry detailed the issue of off-contract items or non-contracted items, their financial impact on the hospital, and how they can be tracked and caught before a payment is made. While those two topics may seem daunting and impossible to reconcile, we are here to provide a solution!
Kermit was the first purpose-built technology for the automation and spend management of the complex bill-only category in 2011. Since that time, other applications have been released in the category, but none of them address the complexity and workflow behind vendor reps entering items and using loopholes to get around contracting within hospitals.
To achieve control in implant spend management and return the balance of power back to the hospital, any bill-only solution must manage all the complex areas of the workflow process. Capturing all SKUs that enter the operating room and are attached to the patient as well as understanding complex contracting terms such as capitated constructs, are parts of the necessary data tracking required to achieve the best results.
From day one, Kermit was built to automate the paper bill sheet to a digital workflow and create checks and balances to keep vendor reps in line. From the point of implementation with Kermit, all hospital rules and contracts are loaded into our system, whether to accommodate complex capitated construct pricing models or how to handle wasted items or off-contract items. The Kermit solution is a complete answer to the fragmented management of elective surgery, from patient scheduling and vendor tray management to the operation itself and eventually vendor and patient payments.
The Kermit solution also addresses many of the other tasks that fall to supply chain, such as managing contract rebates and implant recalls and providing detailed data analytics for the team to review. Kermit allows supply chain to come together with their physicians and hospital finance to have a comprehensive discussion backed by data being pulled in real-time from the operating room to better understand vendor rep habits and keep savings from slipping through the cracks. Kermit’s main goal is to arm the key stakeholders in hospitals with the tools and knowledge that have been locked away for so long.