Inflation and Purchased Services

Stronger consumer demand coupled with global supply chain and workforce challenges are driving inflation across every sector of the U.S. economy, including healthcare, said Mickey Meehan, chief operating officer, Conductiv^® and Chaun Powell, group vice president, Remitra™. And while the U.S. has been seeing and living with higher costs from the gas pump to the grocery store, there has been less discussion about inflation in the services sector.

Part of the reason for that may be due to the complexities and variabilities of purchased services and the invoicing of those services. For example, at one large IDN, the chief supply chain officer shared with Meehan and Powell that departments and hospitals nationally lack the sophistication to accurately predict the expense of a service based on complexities of the contracts, which can be 70 pages long and filled with holiday, weekend and surge pricing models. “Add to that inflationary up-charging, and it becomes increasingly apparent that technology-based solutions are more critical today than ever before,” they said.

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