Five years after the launch of its new name and corporate structure, Premier owner and Certified Sponsor Capstone Health Alliance is running at full power and is eager to bring new services and opportunities to its members.
An offshoot of WNC Health Network (an Asheville, North Carolina-based alliance formed in 1994), Capstone officially took off in October 2013 after plans were formalized to separate the WNC Health Network’s group purchasing program from other operating divisions. Today the GPO has more than 250 hospital members in 23 states, and its purchasing volume exceeds $7 billion.
“We are proud to have more than 675 contracts in our portfolio, which are either Premier-enhanced contracts or Capstone local agreements,” says President and CEO Tim Bugg. “Our logic is that through aggregation and collaboration, there is opportunity everywhere.
Tim Bugg
“Led by our two executives – Mark Landau, COO, and Robin Lincoln, SVP Contracting Operations – Capstone has more than 90 agreements negotiated for our membership on Capstone paper, and more than 575 Premier aggregated or enhanced agreements,” says Bugg. Capstone is an active member and holds a board seat in the Healthcare Supply Chain Association (HSCA), and follows all safe harbors and codes of conducts related to GPOs.
“To be clear, Premier brings us tremendous opportunities in the sheer number of contracts and programs it allows us to work with, and we are proud to support the Premier ASCEND program, which includes more than 70 percent of our membership,” he says. “The fact that Capstone operates as a regional GPO does not negate or devalue our belief in Premier as a GPO. We believe that together, we bring sustained value to our shared memberships.”
Capstone contracting decisions are member-driven, through a committee process, he says. A team of region managers – all of whom have healthcare supply chain experience – call on Capstone members “not to sell contracts, but to identify savings and help the members improve the supply chain in their respective organizations.”
Purchased services
Like other GPOs and alliances, Capstone sees tremendous savings opportunities in non-traditional areas, such as purchased services. Capstone has expanded its purchased-services portfolio by close to 700 percent since 2015. Its portfolio now includes opportunities for IT, human resources, facilities, clinical and professional services, as well as finance.
“We have a member-led Purchased Services oversight committee that reviews all opportunities, both at the regional level and for all Capstone members,” says Bugg. “We have seen many savings opportunities and successes in purchased services from a variety of areas outside of supply chain. We have found that partnering a member with a service vendor in a nontraditional area, then sharing the value the member realized, helps our membership better understand the potential value a contract offers.
“As with most GPOs and regional aggregation groups, physician preference items are a priority, and Capstone will continue to strive to find solutions for our organizations using our member-driven model,” he says. “We are also looking forward to continued expansion in the non-acute market. We have large member partners, such as CHAMPS Group Purchasing, Vantage Group Purchasing, and IPC Group Purchasing, which have large non-acute memberships. Our job is to work collectively with them to affect cost in all markets of care.
Variance in care
“While contracting and aggregation will always be the core of what we do, our long-term goal is to use aggregation and collaboration to tackle variance in care using best practice/best outcome models. We obviously realize this is a big dot goal, but to really reduce cost in healthcare, the strategy has to be broader than just contracting. We are proud to be an owner and partner of Premier, and we are continually impressed by Premier’s successes in being more than a GPO. Premier leads the way in helping its members not only reduce cost, but improve quality with data-driven results. Our hope is to use our regional model with Premier’s national experience to further enhance our member facilities’ ability to achieve success in this new era of healthcare.”
Director of Member Services Kristin Scott helps evaluate and understand members’ needs.
“Our members expressed a need for continued learning and training,” recalls Bugg. “In our discussions we found there weren’t many affordable options for them to train incoming staff or keep their own knowledge up to date. As a result, we developed the Capstone Learning Academy, an online portal housing supply chain modules on tactical and strategic topics designed by subject matter experts from our membership.” Topics covered include purchasing, supply chain and inventory control. Upcoming modules were scheduled to be released, with a second-quarter focus on value analysis.
“Essentially, at the core of it, we are a GPO married to a GPO, and we use all resources necessary to provide our members with as many cost reduction opportunities as possible,” says Bugg. “Our job is to reduce cost in the healthcare space, and that’s what we strive to do every day.”