The situation
Health spending in Austria continues to rise, and hospitals are highly motivated to improve cost-efficiency. The LKH University Hospital Graz is no exception. Cook Medical has supplied LKH-University Hospital Graz with products for many years. However, Cook and the hospital’s business managers had not worked together very closely. A member of Cook’s Healthcare Business Solutions team met with the finance director of LKH-University Hospital Graz to determine how they could create efficiencies. They discovered that the hospital received more than five hundred Cook invoices each year. Each invoice cost the hospital €56 to process. The hospital’s annual cost to process the invoices was €30,000.
One invoice a month
Cook and the hospital worked together to make invoicing more efficient. The hospital would receive one invoice per month for all Cook products that were purchased across all of the hospital’s departments. This more efficient method of invoicing was presented to the financial director at the hospital and the team responsible for invoicing at Cook. After a successful test of the new invoicing method, Cook and the hospital changed to monthly invoicing.
“A small change in our ordering and invoicing structure ensured a substantial amount of cost reduction per year without any change in our high standard of care for our patients. All it needed were two short meetings with Cook and a short test run for the new invoicing process to be successfully implemented.”
—Mag. Gebhard Falzberger, Executive Director, LKH-University Hospital Graz
The result
The LKH-University Hospital Graz saved more than €22,000 annually by a consolidating the number of invoices that it receives. This programme delivered savings without affecting clinicians and patients. This change required only two meetings with the hospital’s financial director and one meeting with the invoicing control team.
“Cook is one of our most reliable business partners and even helped us to identify a substantial cost efficiency potential. Because of this quick and successful cooperation with Cook, we will contact our other business partners and try to engage them also in finding similar solutions for more cost efficiency.”
—Mag. Elke Schnedl-Lamprecht, Head of Finance, LKH-University Hospital Graz
Contact us
For more information or to speak with one of our Healthcare Business Solutions team members, please e-mail us at info-EMEA@cookmedical.com.
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