Client

An independent, academic healthcare system operating 42 primary care locations, 13 outpatient facilities, four acute care facilities, and 1,000+ beds.

Challenge

The client’s purchasing department felt they had reduced wastes costs as much as possible on their own.  With materials and waste management being a large operating cost, the client engaged our team of waste experts to streamline their waste program.  Their goals were as follows:

• Reduce the number of vendors
• Improve vendor data capture
• Provide support for sustainability and technology implementations
• Provide support for supplier diversity initiatives

Solution

• Leverage our $100MM+ database of waste spend and extensive waste industry relationships on behalf of our client.
• Send Letters of Authorization to our clients waste contractors and step into the role of their waste department.
• Focus on municipal solid waste for their four acute care facilities (since they were using a GPO contract for reg bad / biohazard services).
• Perform a waste stream analysis and renegotiate existing contracts on behalf of our clients.
• Complete renegotiations for existing solid waste contracts in less than two months.

Results

The renegotiated contracts included more favorable terms on fees, vendor performance, and improved Service Level Agreements (SLAs). We also recommended applying sensor technology to prevent compactors from being pulled significantly short of capacity.  We also began electronically scraping and auditing all trash invoices to catch and reverse spurious charges and created guidance on recycling sustainability. This helped to reduce the number of waste vendors. By acting on their behalf as their waste department, we created a single point of contact for all vendors. Our client portal provides access to dashboards for executive decision making and access to deeper data for operations, risk management and other functions.

Savings Highlights:

• $232,000+ savings in waste expenses across four acute care facilities with 1,000+ beds.
• 34% monthly net savings across dumpster accounts.
• 29% monthly net savings across compactor accounts.
• Technology guidance resulting in $22,000 in annual net savings.

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