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Outsourcing: the new age of hospital supply management.

As the healthcare industry faces increasing pressure to identify and cut costs, outsourcing of Central Service functions may become dominant. The authors represent Baxter Healthcare's vision for CS in the next decade, which includes supplying comprehensive case kits containing all the consumable supplies needed for a patient's entire length of stay. The goal is to replace large, on-hand inventories and expensive CS functions with a procedure-based processing, packing and delivery service. The vision is already underway from several vendors. There should be cost savings in picking and replenishment functions currently handled in the OR, repair and CS costs. Hospital personnel may not be replaced, but their functions will change. The arrangement requires long-term thinking, mutual acceptance of risk and the development of trust.