Alternate care sites. The challenges for GPOs, suppliers and materiel management

As the United States healthcare delivery system evolves, the alternate care site market is creating challenges and opportunities for materiel managers, groups and alliances. To be effective, an alliance or GPO must provide value. Many network integrators are setting up wellness and "telephone triage" programs to keep people from entering the continuum of care at all. Alternate care sites will face the same cost constraints presently being felt in many hospitals. GPOs and alliances will therefore have to provide value to these sites in ease of use, meaningful benefits, easy administration, and working with the network and distributors. Materiel managers can play an important role by developing product standardization among sites, rationalizing distribution to sites by using one or perhaps two distributors to serve all of the alternate site providers in the network, using group contracts to lower acquisition prices and providing greater services.