Oct 21, 2025
Optimizing One-Time Use Item Spend in Clinical Procurement
Optimizing One-Time Use Item Spend in Clinical Procurement
A healthcare organization participating in a Group Purchasing Organization (GPO) identified a recurring issue: clinicians frequently ordered non-contracted items for one-time use. While this practice allowed flexibility in urgent or specialized cases, it also resulted in significant overspending due to bypassing negotiated GPO pricing agreements.
Challenge
The organization lacked visibility into the scale and financial impact of one-time use purchases. In the absence of structured data analysis, it was difficult to quantify the extent of avoidable spending or assess whether equivalent contracted items were available through existing GPO agreements.
Approach
The team initiated a targeted operational review of one-time use item procurement. Key steps included:
∙Data Analysis: Leveraging internal procurement data, the team quantified the total spend on one-time use items.
∙Spend Segmentation: Of the $83M annual spend in this category, approximately $8.3 million was identified as expenditures where equivalent contracted items were available and could be substituted.
∙Policy Review: The team examined existing procurement policies that permitted clinicians to bypass contracts and identified opportunities to strengthen compliance controls.
∙Process Redesign: The team recommended updates to the ordering process which introduced automated checks for contracted alternatives and flagged non-compliant orders for review.
Outcome
The initiative produced the following results:
∙Cost Reduction: The analysis identified up to $8.3 million in avoidable annual spending, providing a clear roadmap for immediate and long-term savings.
∙Policy Alignment: A proposed policy revision strengthened adherence to GPO contracts, ensuring procurement requests were consistent with negotiated pricing structures.
∙Operational Visibility: The development of a data-driven foundation will enable the future creation of dashboards to monitor compliance, track savings, and support continuous performance improvements.
Key Takeaways
∙Operational Insight: Clinically driven decisions can benefit from structured procurement oversight when supported by data.
∙Cross-Functional Collaboration: Success required input from procurement, clinical staff, and data analysts to ensure compliance.
∙Scalable Impact: The methodology utilized in this initiative can be replicated across other spend categories to identify further savings and enhance strategic sourcing.
