A new webinar hosted by The Healthcare Supply Chain Hub will explore how healthcare organisations can adopt strategic sourcing to achieve long-term savings, improve patient outcomes, and foster supplier collaboration amid industry shifts towards smarter supply chain practices.
On Thursday, August 28, The Healthcare Supply Chain Hub will host a free 30-minute webinar designed to reshape how healthcare organisations approach procurement strategies. Hosted by Angelique Beslic of The Bridge Venturers, LLC – Healthcare Supply Chain Hub, the webinar will address a critical issue in healthcare procurement: the tension between transactional sourcing and strategic sourcing.
Transactional sourcing often appears to offer immediate savings by focusing primarily on the lowest price. However, as the webinar will underscore, this method frequently “steps over dollars to pick up pennies,” leading to unintended consequences such as increased total costs, vendor churn, and clinician frustration. These factors can undermine the overall patient care outcomes, emphasizing that initial price cuts do not necessarily equate to real savings in a complex healthcare environment.
The alternative approach—strategic sourcing—broadens the focus by considering the Total Cost of Ownership (TCO). Instead of merely evaluating upfront costs, strategic sourcing incorporates a holistic view that includes quality, utilisation, maintenance, downstream impact, and lifecycle expenses. This aligns procurement decisions with long-term value creation rather than short-term cost-cutting.
Industry experts widely agree on the importance of TCO in procurement decisions. According to recent analyses from procurement consultancies and thought leaders, TCO enables organisations to uncover hidden costs throughout the lifecycle of products and services, from acquisition to disposal. This comprehensive calculation helps enterprises negotiate better contracts, reduce overall expenditure, and make more sustainable choices. Additionally, by factoring in maintenance, operational efficiencies, and the clinical impact, strategic sourcing aligns financial goals with patient care priorities.
Effective category management emerges as a key element within strategic sourcing efforts. Bundling spend across categories not only generates leveraging power with suppliers but also fosters alignment between different stakeholders within the organisation. Clinician engagement, often overlooked in transactional models, is critical to ensuring that procurement strategies deliver sustainable improvements. Without clinicians’ buy-in, purported savings frequently fail to materialise or endure.
The upcoming webinar will offer participants a “Massive Action Checklist,” showcasing actionable steps for healthcare supply chain professionals to adopt strategic sourcing practices that prioritise long-term savings and quality outcomes. Attendees will be guided on how to shift from a cost-centric mindset to a value-driven procurement approach, integrating advanced analytics, supplier collaboration, and lifecycle cost analysis tools.
This event arrives amid growing recognition that healthcare procurement must move beyond transactional dynamics to tackle complexities inherent in supply chains and patient care delivery. As data and industry reports illustrate, organisations embracing strategic sourcing techniques frequently achieve significant cost reductions—sometimes up to 30% over several years—while simultaneously fostering stronger supplier relationships and enhancing operational resilience.
The webinar not only highlights best practices for healthcare procurement but reflects a broader evolving industry trend. Integrating technology, improving supply chain transparency, and forging clinician alignment signals a decisive move towards smarter, more sustainable sourcing within healthcare systems globally.
For those interested in rethinking procurement strategy to drive deeper savings and better care outcomes, the 30-minute session promises valuable insights and practical tools to start changing how supply chain decisions are made.
Registration details and access to the Zoom webinar session on August 28 from 3:30 to 4:00 p.m. PST are available through The Healthcare Supply Chain Hub’s website.
Source: Noah Wire Services
