AHRMM and Arizona State University Announce Name of Online Benchmarking Tool

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CHICAGO, June 14, 2007 - The Association for Healthcare Resource & Materials Management (AHRMM) of the American Hospital Association (AHA) and the W.P. Carey School of Business at Arizona State University have announced an online tool designed to assist healthcare organizations in establishing benchmarks for measuring supply chain performance improvements.

Currently under development, SCMetrix™ will help move the materials management field beyond results-oriented financial metric benchmarking to a more comprehensive performance measurement and benchmarking industry standard that recognizes the importance of measuring value drivers and implementation of best practices in supply chain operations.

“While most financial metrics rely on a facility-wide adjustment factor such as bed size and patient acuity to adjust supply costs, SCMetrix will be able to profile a hospital’s supply chain and create comparison-groups based on supply chain structures and best practice implementations,” said Vicki Smith-Daniels, professor of Supply Chain Management at the W.P. Carey School of Business. “SCMetrix will lead the way toward a more consistent and transferable performance analysis.”

Through SCMetrix’s functionality, healthcare organizations will be able to benchmark their performance and value drivers for two different supply chains: the functional supply chain for commodity materials and supplies, and the clinical supply chain for physician-preference products.

In addition, SCMetrix will offer two different levels of benchmarking to organizations: at the organizational level, including departmental and service line comparisons of supply chain performance, and at the advanced level, including a limited set of Diagnosis Related Groups (DRGs) and inpatient/outpatient procedures.

SCMetrix will be showcased at AHRMM’s 45^th Annual Conference & Exhibition in San Diego August 12-15. Demonstration times are as follows: Sunday, August 12 at 3 pm, Monday, August 13 at 2:45 pm and 4:15 pm and Tuesday, August 14 at 7:30 am,
1:45 pm and 4:30 pm.

For more information on the SCMetrix, please visit www.ahrmm.org.

About AHRMM
The Association for Healthcare Resource & Materials Management (AHRMM) is the leading national association for executives in healthcare resource and materials management. A personal membership group of the American Hospital Association, AHRMM serves more than 3,900 active members. Founded in 1962, AHRMM advances and supports the healthcare supply chain profession by providing leadership, education, resources and networking. For more information, please visit www.ahrmm.org.

About W. P. Carey School of Business at ASU
W. P. Carey School of Business at Arizona State University is one of the largest business schools in the United States, with more than 190 faculty members, 1,400 graduate students, and more than 2,700 upper-division undergraduate students. The school is internationally recognized for its leadership in supply chain management and services marketing and is highly regarded for its faculty’s research productivity. The school’s seven research centers serve as a link between business communities and the areas of marketing, entrepreneurship, information technology and supply chain management. For more information, please visit wpcarey.asu.edu and http://knowledge.wpcarey.asu.edu/.