Greater focus on the essentials: how operational procurement relieves the financial and organizational strain in hospitals

Hospital procurement is a complex process. It’s divided into two sectors: strategic and operational procurement. While strategic purchasing sets the framework conditions, such as evaluating the product range, choosing suppliers, negotiating conditions and concluding contracts, operational procurement tackles the daily frontline work. This includes placing orders, monitoring delivery dates and ensuring that the right material is in the right place at the right time. Functional operational procurement is often only noticeable during an emergency: if an emergency patient arrives at 3 a.m., the required material must be available immediately.

But it’s precisely these operational, transaction-driven tasks that tie up valuable human and financial resources. What if the hospital could focus fully on its strategic strength?

We spoke to Diane Hardouin Duparc, Procurement Manager with Swiss Post health logistics, about how outsourcing operational procurement makes this possible and what advantages this brings to hospitals.

Diane, the term “operational procurement” is appearing more and more frequently. However, many people understand this simply as an ordering process. Isn’t that somewhat simplistic?

Yes. Operational procurement is much more than just placing an order. It’s a bit like the engine room of hospital purchasing and encompasses all transaction-oriented tasks: from determining requirements, placing orders and monitoring delivery dates through to invoice checking and master data management. There’s a complex interplay of many small but essential steps to ensure that the right material is in the right place at the right time.

That’s just putting it briefly. How can this process be made tangible for someone who doesn’t work in procurement every day?

Think of it this way: the hospital usually has to manage the entire order process individually for hundreds of suppliers, from ordering and keeping track of deadlines to checking invoices. We place ourselves in between as a central partner. The hospital now has just one point of contact who coordinates all the complexities with all the suppliers in the background and ensures that the shelves are always full. This means we’re not just a supplier, but also the manager of the entire operational procurement process.

What’s the advantage if this coordination is no longer carried out by the hospital itself?

The most obvious advantage is that we relieve the pressure of the hospital’s procurement team, meaning they can fully concentrate on their strategic core competencies. There are also advantages in terms of both costs and logistics: a hospital often requires several hundred square metres to ensure sufficient supply of all consumables. We take care of this storage and pre-finance the stock. The hospital only pays for the materials when they are used. This reduces capital commitment, eases the strain on the balance sheet and frees up not only financial resources, but also valuable space. The hospital can then use this space to generate revenue, for example by using it as outpatient treatment areas.

That sounds like a big step, in which some control must also be given up. How do you make sure the hospital can still keep track of everything?

You’re absolutely right that control and transparency are crucial. No one wants to make blind decisions, and security of supply must be guaranteed at all times. That’s why we’ve created the “Post Health-Cockpit” – a digital customer platform. This gives the hospital full, round-the-clock access to all relevant data in real time: stock levels, delivery status, orders, reports and much more. All data is exchanged fully automatically and paperless via background EDI interfaces that connect our system directly to the hospital’s ERP system. The hospital therefore retains full control, but hands over the time-consuming operational work.

Can a hospital outsource only the operational procurement to you, but maintain the logistics itself?

No, and that’s a very important point. We only ever offer operational procurement as an integral part of our logistics services, but these are modular in structure and individually tailored to customers. The two areas are inextricably linked. We can only guarantee high quality and reliability throughout the entire chain if we manage the physical processes ourselves, from acceptance of goods and storage through to station supply. It is a holistic system, which can only reach its full potential when everything works together perfectly. However, it’s possible to use Swiss Post’s logistics services without the operational procurement service.