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Most healthcare organizations are focused on value initiatives – increasing quality at a lower cost. Improving patient-centered value is essential to a sustainable competitive advantage. Increasingly, medical device companies are seeking innovative ways to improve “value alignment” with their customers.

Most likely, medical device companies are also re-evaluating answers to traditional marketing questions. Who is the ultimate customer? The physician? The hospital? The patient? What about insurance companies or other payors? Certainly, there are many stakeholders that must be satisfied to ensure success in value based healthcare. So how do medical device companies transform value while serving multiple stakeholders? By venturing beyond the four walls of our organizations with a clear line of sight to the patient, new opportunities for increased value emerge.

In my search of new patient-centered, value opportunities, I decided to explore beyond the walls of the hospital. Prior to becoming a healthcare executive, I began my career in manufacturing including a stint in the semi-conductor industry. The fusion of these experiences sparked an exploratory concept that I coined “from the plant to patient.” My goal was to understand the device manufacturing process and facilitate conversations with engineers and managers regarding inefficiencies that occur from plant through the delivery of the medical device to the patient. Note that this concept could be applied to many types of implanted devices used in elective surgeries.

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