Supplier marketing tactics continue to artificially prop up physician and patient demand for high-end products, including some with unintended negative consequences from both a financial and quality standpoint. This has been the situation for decades, but is fast becoming an untenable situation for hospitals—especially those that have failed to calculate the true cost of ownership.
I recently unearthed a reference sheet I penned in 2003, when drug-eluting stents first hit the market, offering steps healthcare providers could take to prepare for the financial impact of the then-new technology. It could just as easily been written about bioresorbable stents now taking hospital finances by storm. My suggestions, in short:
• Do a deep-dive analysis of how supplies are currently being utilized for stent procedures
• Determine the expense of treating patients impacted by the new stent (based on conversion estimates)
• Share the results with your finance team and negotiate carve-outs with payers
• Perform a supply expense projection
• Share the analysis with your physicians
• Combine intelligence gained from physician discussions with expense projection to estimate proportion of patients who will receive the new stent
• Share projections with hospital board of directors
• Develop and implement guidelines for use with medical staff, based on approved uses and clinical studies
But planning for the impact and actually limiting it are two different things entirely. The challenges in preserving cardiovascular service line margins have barely budged over the years, even as the consequences of inaction have grown exponentially. Year after year, a handful of high-end products make headlines with the only certainty being that costs will ramp up 5 to 10 percent. Below are what I see as the five perennial culprits.
HENRY KOTULA 