At major health systems and hospitals, there are hundreds of individual contracts and pricing agreements among numerous departments and teams. These contracts can be with vendors or even through a GPO. However, to stay organized and ensure an accurate Procure to Pay (P2P) process, a Hospital Contacts Manager should monitor all of these vendor agreements.

Why Hospital Contracts Managers Should Maintain Record of Pricing Agreements

We recently worked with a large health system to uncover overpayments and recover funds. This organization had been paying a vendor, Stryker Orthopedics, a total of $930 for each specific item.

However, during our audit of the health system, we identified that the organization paid more than $2,000 each for this item on several invoices. We contacted Stryker Orthopedics to recover the funds, and the vendor argued that the item was listed at a higher contract price when used in a specific procedure. Working with the hospital Contracts Manager, we uncovered that no such contract existed, and we were able to reclaim more than $12,000 for the health system.

TAG’s Tips for a Hospital Contracts Manager

At a major health system, the Contract Manager should:

• Collect, organize, and monitor all purchasing contracts across the organization.
• Keep all contracts and price lists in a centralized location for easy access. Copies may be shared with other departments, as needed.
• Track contract expiration dates closely, so expiring agreements can be addressed in advance.
• Ensure new pricing agreements are loaded into the system by their effective dates to avoid overcharges or confusion on prices.
• Investigate any discrepancies between invoices and purchase orders throughly before paying the incorrect amount.

For a comprehensive review of your vendors and contracts, get in touch with The Audit Group. TAG is here to help make sure that major hospitals and health systems are not leaving money on the table and are running as efficiently as possible. Connect with our team to get started.