By George Vunovic, Executive Vice President, Technologies, OC Reilly Inc.

(Jan. 25, 2021)—OCR Medical Equipment Management (OCR MEM) worked with Chesapeake Regional Health (CRH), a large health network in Virginia, to achieve millions in cumulative cost savings while maintaining outstanding care.

Leadership at CRH realized the financial stress created by costs associated with medical equipment management service and product choices, and asked OCR MEM to assist. Drawing on its national and regional resources, OCR MEM recommended that the customer consider in-sourcing biomedical engineering across its enterprise, while partnering with other major original equipment manufacturers (OEM) to deliver higher-end imaging services for the system.

This determined appropriate levels of medical equipment technical support without compromising quality. OCR MEM also assessed CRH’s purchased maintenance contract spend, identifying options to lower costs in the maintenance and repair of these expensive assets and services.

These recommendations required a concerted effort by CRH physicians and executive leadership to convert to a re-engineered service delivery model, and ultimately succeeded,, while significantly reducing spend. Also, by renegotiating its MEM contracts, CRH dramatically reduced costs without changes to equipment coverage or uptime.

The technical services and sourcing initiatives identified by OCR MEM improved the health system’s annual bottom-line results by an estimated $1.2 million annually.

“OCR MEM provided us with valuable market intelligence, engagement skills, and vendor negotiating expertise that enabled us to successfully re-engineer our approach to medical equipment management,” said Amber L. Egyud, DNP, RN, Chief Operating Officer and Nursing Officer at CRH. “By virtue of designing an in-house biomed program in concert with enhanced oversight with regard to OEM services, we were able to achieve significant savings while maintaining outstanding quality care.”

The professionals at OCR stand ready to bring these same levels of insight, understanding, and solid recommendations to address your health care supply chain issues in the same way. Contact us today to start a conversation.

© 2021 OC Reilly, Inc.