AHRMM On-demand Webinar: Reducing Costs and Environmental Impacts to Healthcare through a Total Cost of Ownership Calculator

With tremendous cost pressures within the U.S. health care system, health care providers are looking at different ways to save money. For many medical devices there are submerged costs that are not always reflected in the purchase price and may not be considered during purchasing decisions. To reduce these costs and associated impacts, the total cost of ownership of a product or service should be included during purchasing decisions to assess the full cost to an organization.

To address this need, a total cost of ownership calculator has been developed to provide purchasers with a standardized and systematic way to consider the various use and waste costs of products that are procured. These direct organizational costs include utility, labor, maintenance and waste disposal. Partnering with Trucost, Practice Greenhealth worked collaboratively with hospitals and health systems, suppliers, and GPOs to build, test, and now deploy a tool for health care.

Learn outcomes from health care organizations that have used the tool, how it was applied, the user requirements, the targeted products, the outcomes showing the comparison of costs and savings identified. This session will demonstrate the tool’s basic functions and share resources available to support its use.  

 

This session covers all three: cost, quality and outcomes. The calculator offers a cost saving solution and allows purchasers to identify and compare product scenarios to find cost savings.  The selected product or service is one that may enhance the quality of health care provided because the product minimizes environmental and human health impacts. This provides a better quality of care and ties into the First Do No Harm principal. The outcome is that by evaluating products through the calculator, decisions will include an evaluation of long term cost savings as well as reduced impacts to human health and environment that improve clinical care (and reimbursements).

 

• State the business case for including a Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) evaluation in the purchasing process for medical products.
• Observe how the TCO tool provides an easy and standardized method to calculate total costs to healthcare to inform purchasing decisions.
• Calculate the savings and outcomes from case studies.
• List submerged cost areas that impact the total cost to your organization.