Healthcare Europa

8.15-9.00

Coffee and croissants

9.00-9.40

Healthcare procurement in Europe - The next ten years

Save on procurement or axe jobs

Imran Dassu, Principal, Healthcare Procurement, AT Kearney Europe

The title of this presentation is the stark choice faced by hospitals Europewide as budgets tighten. There is plenty of room for improvement. But effective procurement in healthcare is elusive and hard to implement. Dassu outlines best practice in five high impact areas based on a new AT Kearney study, commissioned by the UK Department of Health, which reviews procurement in UK hospitals compared to best practice in other industries worldwide. How can hospital CEOs and CFOs break logjams and best build effective procurement?

9.40-10.40

Medtech purchasing - best practice and trends

Medtech purchasing (everything from simple consumables through to MRI and prostheses) represents 15% of expenditure for most hospitals. Many studies suggest that most healthcare systems could save 20-30% if they deploy the right strategies.

Rationalising purchasing at university hospitals

Mario Varela, Managing Director, London Procurement Partnership

Varela has over 20 years experience of working with university hospitals in London and, in 2012, hospitals bought £1.2 billion of product using LPP contracts and tenders. Here, he distills his experience and looks specifically at how to win trust, create champions and create data that challenges preconceptions.

Pushing Pan-European Pricing - the Potential

Martin Swegmark, CEO, Purch AB

Martin, with a background in procurement from both Capio and Unilabs, will talk about Pan-European agreements with manufacturers, including how links between physicians and medtech can be rationalised. He then looks at how benchmarking of pricing differences, at a Pan-European level, can be used to push prices down and describes the critical success factors.

11.40-11.00

Coffee

11.00-12.40

How procurement is changing in Europe

What are the real changes that are taking place now to improve procurement?

Professionalising public sector procurement

Dominique Legouge, CEO, Resah Ile de France

Partnering with medtech Resah IDF has pioneered new ways of working with medtech companies. Legouge looks at Resah’s partnership with Phillips and other suppliers who are encouraged to contribute services around products and are rewarded for good outcomes and penalised for poor performance. How does this work in practice and what are the limits of what is achievable?

How procurement differs across Europe

Bradley Gould, CEO, Prospitalia

Gould is uniquely placed to offer an analysis of how procurement differs across Europe. German, Austrian and Dutch members bought €1.2bn through its contracts and tenders in 2012 and Prospitalia has also researched France, Italy and Poland. He looks at trends and, in particular, how electronic purchasing can cut the cost to serve for medtech, as well as, for hospitals.

How competitive tenders work best

Stig Grydeland, Director, Private Health Care Services, South-Eastern Norway Regional Health Authority

Competitive tendering has led to savings of 50% in some instances in Norway. Over the last decade, Grydland has pioneered this process in the South East (Oslo) region which accounts for 60% of the country's healthcare expenditure. Such tenders now cover imaging, surgery and laboratory tests, drug addiction, rehabilitation and psychiatry. Grydeland looks at how tenders are set up and at how quality of outcome is also regulated.

12.40-14.00

Lunch

14.00-15.30

Workshop 1 (See choice below)

15.30-16.00

Tea

16.00-17.30

Workshop 2 (See choice below)

19.00 Drinks

Rob Piconi

Executive Chairman, Medical Equipment Solutions and Applications (MESA)

Piconi presents a case study on how better procurement can improve service quality and reliability, better managing equipment uptime rates consistently at upwards of 99% while delivering distinct cost savings on imaging capital equipment, spare parts and maintenance service servicing. What steps do hospital board members need to take to achieve this?

19.30 Gala Dinner

Now Choose Your Workshops!

During the afternoon delegates are free to choose two from the following eight workshops. Each is an opportunity to pool your experience, to learn from others and to get a better understanding of what is possible. Highly interactive, each workshop is limited to 15 people and is run by a facilitator. The entire 90 minutes is given over to constructive discussion (no Powerpoint!).

Outsourcing medical services

How can hospital management identify and best assess opportunities to outsource certain medical services? How can you best overcome resistance? What are the potential savings? What are the pitfalls?

Outsourcing non-medical services

When and how does it make sense to consider outsourcing? Should you be outsourcing in a piecemeal way or does it make more sense to sign a single over-arching agreement with one superprovider who can cover all the bases?

Working with physicians

Persuading physicians to standardise, convincing physicians to look at lower cost options, even having a dialogue with the medical profession are not easy things for many procurement teams. What are the steps we need to take to create a better working relationship which will enable a real win/win?

Beating monopoly suppliers

In some categories, certain medtech suppliers enjoy a near monopoly on certain products. This can lead to high prices as procurement teams negotiate from positions of weakness. This session explores ways of dealing with this situation and, in particular, how to best craft alliances of other suppliers and services so as to offer an alternative.

Cultural change - how to bridge siloes

Often, the main impediment to change is cultural. All too frequently, procurement teams not only have to contend with hostile physicians, but also groups in other hospitals, hubs or rivals in an outpatient setting who see them as competitors. How can you best build bridges to these groups?

Effective category management

This session looks at the skills base procurement teams need and at how they can best build or acquire these skills. This may involve paying more for managers with real medical and technical knowledge. What is the pay off from this?

Using data

All too often, procurement takes place in an information desert or, perhaps more accurately, in an information jungle! How can procurement teams and hospital directors best use data? The session looks at how best to benchmark prices and at how registers can be used to inform discussions with clinicians.

Buying diagnostics

This free-ranging session looks at the procurement of imaging and lab equipment and also at lab and imaging service outsourcing. New and innovative ways of buying imaging equipment are rapidly emerging.

This intensive, practical, one day event helps delegates to build better strategies for more effective procurement. It does this by bringing together the new professional elite in healthcare procurement from across Europe. It provides delegates with a stream of new ideas. This covers everything from new ways to partner with medtech to how to best combat physician preference. Speakers in the morning look at issues such as pan-European pricing and price differences and competitive tendering. Afternoon workshops allow delegates to focus on burning issues such as category management and how to best use data. Healthcare procurement is changing fast in Europe. Greater financial rigour means that, increasingly, procurement is professionalised and centralised. Price opacity is decreasing. Everywhere, physician preference is challenged and power is shifting to new purchasers with different agendas. Everywhere, medical and non-medical services are being outsourced. Procurement of services and products makes up a massive part of healthcare budgets. The good news is that there is much that can be done to improve efficiency and get much better terms. This event is a rare opportunity to look beyond your preoccupations and your world. Use it to share best practice, to examine innovation and, above all, to assess what is really possible. It is a forum which will help you to think the unthinkable. Max Hotopf CEO, Healthcare Europa

Think the unthinkable

Understand how pricing is changing

Share best practice in our workshops

Learn what is being achieved in other countries

Analyse how procurement is changing

Hear from innovators

Examine new models of procurement

Hear from real buyers

Most healthcare conferences feature poor speakers who overrun on time and do not address key issues. The worst feature interminable presentations from big pharma and politicians mouthing inanities. Often they allow sponsors to determine content. Academic conferences are often removed from the real world.

We understand our delegates’ information needs

We recruit speakers who meet these needs

We run to time and actively chair to enable audience participation and Q&A

We give delegates printed slide packs on the day

We allow delegates to network in advance by giving them delegate lists

Directors and senior managers at procurement hubs

Directors and senior managers at national and regional agencies

Procurement directors and CFOs in hospitals

Policymakers

Payors

Advisers

Directors and senior managers in outsource providers

Directors and senior managers in medtech

Director and senior managers in pharma

Investors