Hospitals and other public institutions, just like private companies, feel the growing importance of optimizing their sourcing processes and organizing their procurement more efficiently due to financial reasons. "eVergabe", developed by the Hessian software provider Healy Hudson, is the first e-tendering solution for the European healthcare sector and is already in use by four procurement associations. Like many other public authorities, hospitals often have to carry out European wide tenders. Furthermore, they have to operate increasingly economical without letting the quality of their work suffer. Because of that, the three German procurement associations Comparatio Health GmbH, EKK eG and P.E.G. eG agreed on a joint business solution for their electronic tendering needs.
The Comparatio Health GmbH was founded at the end of 2006 as a joint service and procurement association of the Hannover Medical School and the university hospitals of Schleswig-Holstein, Magdeburg, Greifswald and Göttingen. Its goal is to optimize the sourcing process by means of the bundling of volumes and the joint tendering of products of the medical and general economic demand while cutting the costs at the same time. The idea turned out to be very successful: a binding negotiated volume of 130 Mio. EUR was announced just after the first business year. In addition, the procurement costs were reduced significantly. At the beginning of 2008, the university hospital Regensburg joined the cooperation.
The procurement association of municipal hospitals in the German Association of Cities (Einkaufsgemeinschaft Kommunaler Krankenhäuser eG im Deutschen Städtetag, EKK eG) already exists for more than ten years. It is organized as a cooperative association and acts non-commercial. With its help, the associated hospitals get ways and means to position themselves competitive. Principal task of the procurement association is to organize a collaborative and legally compliant purchase of articles for the hospital demands and the product standardization combined with it in order to achieve savings. Further services of a professional procurement management like process optimization, continuing education, knowledge management, evaluation and benchmarking meanwhile top the image off.
The PEG eG, too, supports hospitals for many years now where an efficient management is concerned. Besides negotiating attractive terms, competent consulting services and the highest possible delivery reliability are its main targets. The association possesses a high market transparency and improves the position of its members through its know-how in procurement, technical management and process management.
All in all, the three organizations represent 507 acute care hospitals with a total of over 160.000 beds. Therefore it was very important to choose an application that is capable of handling such great capacities. Due to successful tests and the broad experience of the developer, the parties involved finally decided to go for the solution of the Healy Hudson GmbH, making "eVergabe" the first e-tendering-solution for the healthcare sector in Germany.
"With eVergabe, all tenders of the members will be published on a central platform and free of charge. The autonomy of the individual procurement associations remains unchanged, since the system administers them as single clients", says Pascal Patronidis, Director Public Sector at Healy Hudson. "Nevertheless they benefit from the synergy effects, e.g. the editing of forms, the definition of contract specifications and the corresponding savings potential at tenders."
With the e.log Einkauf und Logistik GmbH, yet another corporation from the healthcare sector has decided to build up an electronic tendering platform with the help of Healy Hudson. e.log was founded in 2001 and has set itself the target of being an interface between hospitals and suppliers, optimizing the procurement processes between them. It attaches great importance to the standardization of processes and products.
The tendering and placing of contracts will be carried out without any media disruption and a lot more efficiency in the future. Through this, the highest possible advantages for both the patients as well as the hospitals can be achieved. The employees of e.log can look back on many years of experience in the market for one thing, but for another thing they can also fall back on the professional competence of the affiliated hospitals, which enables them to develop successful sourcing strategies.
One main advantage of the individual tendering solutions from Healy Hudson is the very high acceptance rate regarding its users due to the fact that nearly no technical premises are necessary. To start using the platform, the user only needs a standard PC and an internet browser. Furthermore, the whole sourcing process from the publication to the placing of contracts can be handled electronically without any media disruption.
For further information, please visit:
- http://www.healy-hudson.com
- http://www.comparatio.org
- http://www.ekkeg.de
- http://www.peg-einkauf.de
- http://www.e-log-gmbh.de
About Healy Hudson
Healy Hudson is one of the leading providers of electronic procurement solutions designed to optimize the procurement processes of private companies and public authorities. With the aid of practical solution platforms, catalog procurement, catalog management and public and private tender preparation and publication can be processed quickly, transparently and automatically.