Optimising a practice’s supply of services

The beginning of a new year is the ideal time to review a range of business matters, especially services that the practice receives from external suppliers. While performance managent of internal resources – clinical and administrative – is within the control of owners, externally sourced products and services are less manageable and will often deserve greater scrutiny. There is a wide range of external services that are essential to the smooth operation of the practice, with some even being critical to delivery of ongoing healthcare.  The first few months of the year can be the perfect time to review services such as cleaning, telecommunications, technology, medical and office supplies, prises maintenance and security. Mission critical {{quote-A:R-W:500-Q: While supplier managent is an administrative task and can sometimes be tedious, it is undoubtedly an essential contributor to successful managent of practice operations. }}Other important areas include waste disposal, insurance, legal, pest control, air conditioning and accountancy. Control of these services is a vital elent in the practice manager’s armory of managent tools but unfortunately only some managers undertake this mission critical-function in a structured, disciplined and documented fashion. There are basically two forms of supplier arrangents: contract based and informal.  Cleaning, laundry and office supplies, for example, may be based on a verbal agreent supported by submission of formal tax invoices and regular payments; however, other services or products such as insurance, medical supplies and accountancy may be acquired on a more formal basis. Regardless of the supplier arrangent type, the duration and terms of each ‘deal’ will mean that they need to be reviewed on varying dates, which can often expose the practice to the risk of the area being overlooked. Hopefully that does not occur with a critical supplier agreent such as insurance policy renewal. Advance notice Admittedly, many suppliers highlight renewals with an advance notification or invoice and major suppliers often assign an account manager who invariably highlights an upcoming contract expiry in advance. However, reliance on external ‘alerts’ is a reactive approach to supply managent and not the most desirable. What if the renewal alert notification arrives while staff are on leave or when it’s nearly too late to consider an alternative quote from another supplier? A relatively simple yet structured solution is to address the aforentioned risks by ploying a documented Supplier Managent Program. This could be as simple as a spreadsheet or ‘ready reckoner’ that details the following:

• Supplier’s name/company
• Service/products provided
• Formal or informal agreent
• Contract renewal dates
• Date/s on which each contract should be reviewed (renegotiated, alternative quote sought etc) prior to renewals. 

Naturally, the rinder ‘alert’ should be diarised in a manner that is not prone to being overlooked – an example could be adding it to Microsoft Outlook or another syst calendar – so the action is reliably highlighted. Don’t forget In addition, once formal contracts are renewed, a further diary note should be logged for the next review or renewal date. While supplier managent is an administrative task and can sometimes be tedious, it is undoubtedly an essential contributor to successful managent of practice operations. This program format may also be ployed for other important, periodically recurring events like staff appraisals.