Acquisition Processes of Certain Product Groups in Hospitals - Orthopaedic and Cardiac Implants

Research areas: High tech medicine, HTA-methods & steering instruments

Project team: Bernhard Fleischner
Duration: March 2009 - December 2009

Publication: Diploma thesis, HTA Project Report 38 - https://eprints.aihta.at/864

Background:
Increasing cost pressure due to demographic change of society as well as new and innovative developments also affect Austrian hospitals. It is essential to utilize resources in a humane and economic efficiently way. Especially the product group implants tends to challenge the supply management. The thesis presents a cross section of procurement of orthopaedic and cardiac implants in Austrian hospitals.  Furthermore, several aspects strongly connected to the overall concept of efficient supply management are surveyed.

Methods:
Used methods were a literature review on procurement of implants as well as guideline-based expert interviews. The interviewed experts were key players of selected organisations who were asked about organization, product choice and procurement strategies.

Results:
The results showed that procurement strategies in Austrian hospitals are changing right now. However there is no common strategy which is implemented in all of the surveyed hospitals and networks.  Processes, grown over the years are only slowly being refined and so the optimization potential is not yet utilized. Already by EU-wide tendering, price reductions of about a double-digit percentage for implants seem to be achievable.

Conclusion:
This thesis could be a basis for further improvement of implant procurement. Subsequently, the several surveyed sub areas should be analyzed to identify optimization opportunities in procurement organizations.