The conversations are similar wherever you may do business or receive goods. Best Quality and Best Price – everybody demands both or at least that’s what is said but in reality people will generally settle for one or the other. In today’s healthcare environment the drive towards providing both best quality and price are being challenged in a patient billing reimbursement formula never seen before by this industry. Think about it – reimbursement rates for patient care charges based on a healthcare provider’s performance – WOW what a concept!
Throughout my career, I hear so many of our colleagues in the HTM industry talk about saving “money”, getting the “best” price or how an original equipment manufacturer (OEM) charges “too much”. I have to be honest, what I rarely hear from some of these same individuals is their sincere desire in achieving a quality product or service. They “want quality” and may express this as an initial “priority” but in reality their decision in the purchase of a part or service is price driven. Quality as a decision factor seems to be left out of the final conversation.
The Affordable Care Act (ACA) which has turned the healthcare industry upside down may be the impetus in finally driving a “thinking” of our HTM service professionals as to Best Quality and Price Value. Quality of service and parts drives medical equipment uptime along with device utilization. It’s this methodology that will contribute to an organizations performance scorecard and assure best patient billing reimbursement opportunity.
In reality, we all demand the best and will not accept anything less when it comes to our own healthcare needs. I always think back to an ultrasound probe analysis project I was involved with a few years back. A project task of that analysis involved visiting each clinical location to test the ultrasound probes. As the clinical ultrasound sonographer was asked to provide the analysis team the probes for quality testing. A question from that clinical ultrasound sonographer was asked to the analysis team – do you want the good quality probes or not so good quality probes? If you were to be the patient which ultrasound probe would you demand for your exam!
