Smart VAR Healthcare Panel: Understanding The IT Purchase Decision-Making Process
By Megan Williams, contributing writer
Your sales process is completely futile if you don’t understand your healthcare IT clients’ decision-making process. At the Smart VAR Healthcare Summit, powered by ScanSource and Business Solutions held Aug. 11 at the Renaissance Dallas Richardson Hotel, the SmartVAR panel — Rabin Pant, director of clinical informatics at Methodist Health System, Dr. Trisha Swift, a healthcare management consultant for Kurt Salmon, and Frank Beman, CEO of Faith Community Hospital — talked about the decision-making process at their respective organizations, the perception of value, and the importance of timeframes.
Diverse Organizations
Pant made sure to emphasize the fact that his organization’s solutions must be customized and that one-size-fits-all solutions won’t be viable. He also explained that his decision-making process might originate with the board of directors when purchasing from Epic, but that smaller purchases, like a printer, might be within his budget to roll out.
Swift reiterated the importance of executive level approval but went on to discuss the understanding of who would be using the product and how they define quality and value. “There is a more conceptual definition of quality or value, and that includes quality plus cost, divided by experience. From a conceptual standpoint, a clinician standpoint, that’s going to be the definition that’s evaluated, when we’re making decisions on whether to purchase something or not. We’re going to look at the impact to providing value-based care and not a quick fix, and how that solution might be fully integrated into the organization,” Swift said. “We’re going to look at all of those entry points and we’re really going to go back to the people providing the care to make those decisions. In fact, I’m aware of legislation up in the Northeast, where hospitals are being mandated to adopt an acuity scoring system into their hospitals.”
Swift also predicted that as the industry moves more toward value-based care, you will see more decision-making ownership placed on those who are most knowledgeable.
Hospital Size
Beman, who is at a smaller hospital, stressed his organization’s compressed timeline due to its size. “We’ll go through our purchasing process, which sometimes is as simple as just coming and sitting down with me, and then I get to make that decision. If it’s a large decision, like the four EHR conversions we’ve done, I always take those to the board of directors.”
To read more about purchasing plans in relation to hospital size, please read this predictive survey on 2015 hospital purchasing expectations.
The Aug. 11 Smart VAR Healthcare Summit was held at the Renaissance Dallas Richardson Hotel. Smart VAR Healthcare Summits, powered by ScanSource and Business Solutions, are sponsored by: Honeywell, Datalogic, and Zebra.