A healthcare group purchasing organization (GPO) negotiates contracts for medical products and services on behalf of its members. A GPO may give you access to contracts and services, but you still need to know who handles each purchase. Start with your agreement: who checks the order, chases a backorder or gets a missing credit resolved?
GAO describes that role in its 2014 report. The report explains what a GPO does. It isn’t a benchmark for what you should save today. GAO GPO report.
Some GPOs offer more than contracts. Premier, for example, has described a partnership that includes supply-chain services, technology and experts alongside its GPO. Check what your organization has bought before deciding what’s missing. Premier partnership announcement.
Who is doing each part?
Use these questions to review your own agreements. The answers will differ by organization.
| Participant | Questions to resolve | Named owner |
|---|---|---|
| Customer | Who defines requirements, authorizes changes, confirms receipt and owns accounting and payment? | ______ |
| GPO | Which contracts and services apply under the customer’s agreement? Who explains eligibility and activation? | ______ |
| Distributor or supplier | Who confirms price, accepts the order and provides availability, shipment and billing evidence? | ______ |
| Software | Which records and workflows does it support? Who operates it and resolves exceptions? | ______ |
| Outside service | What specific work does its agreement assign? Where are approval and escalation boundaries? | ______ |
An order can still get stuck even when everyone has done what their agreement requires. Make sure a person or team is responsible for the next step.
Responsibility worksheet
For each recurring task, complete one row:
- Work to complete: ______
- Agreement that covers this work: ______
- Named owner and backup: ______
- Required customer decision: ______
- Information or system access needed: ______
- Supplier or GPO handoff: ______
- Evidence of completion: ______
- Who to contact if the work gets stuck: ______
Start with quote checks, ordering, backorders, delivery problems, returns and missing credits. Where the contract calls for it, include checks on site rosters, pricing tiers and effective dates. Write down the person responsible for each task. If a task has no owner, compare hiring, software and an outside service.
Example: adding a third location
Consider a regional operator opening its third site. Someone needs to check whether the existing price applies to that location, supplier account, item and pack. Check effective dates and any activation requirements, too. The quote comparison checklist covers account-specific terms.
Compare the first orders and invoices with those terms. If the price differs, find out why before treating it as an error. Checking eligibility under an existing contract is separate from renegotiating it.
Manoa handles the purchasing work you want to hand off. We don’t replace your GPO, and we negotiate contracts only when you ask us to. We start by looking at what still lands on your team’s desk and whether we can take it on. Here’s the work we handle.
