Case studies

Situation. A regional system running a busy cardiac program had never benchmarked its perfusion disposables against comparable institutions. With a fully loaded disposable cost that commonly runs $2,500–$4,000 per case, and supply contracts that had auto-renewed for years, per-case cost was effectively invisible to finance.

Approach. We reconstructed fully loaded disposable cost per case by procedure type and benchmarked it against national ranges. High-spend outliers — oxygenators, custom tubing packs, and cannulae — were identified and repriced, and a prioritized renegotiation roadmap was built with ROI projections attached to each item.

Result. An 18% reduction in perfusion supplies cost, achieved without changing a single product the surgical team clinically required.

Situation. Premium and contract labor spend in perfusion had grown untethered from actual cardiac case volume — driven by a vendor-recommended staffing model rather than institutional data. In a scarce specialty where premium coverage can cost multiples of an employed FTE, that drift is expensive.

Approach. An FTE analysis mapped real case volume and after-hours demand against the existing coverage model. We redesigned the coverage structure to match the true demand curve, eliminating paid idle readiness while protecting call coverage.

Result. A 12% reduction in contract and premium labor, with improved schedule stability and reduced burnout risk for the team.

Situation. Heart-lung machine service agreements across three sites had auto-renewed at above-market rates, bundled in ways that obscured the true cost per unit. With each console representing a six-figure capital asset and annual service running into the tens of thousands per unit, the opacity was costly.

Approach. We unbundled and benchmarked the maintenance contracts, replaced ad hoc renewals with a fleet lifecycle plan, and renegotiated terms across the system from a single, data-backed position.

Result. A 24% reduction in equipment maintenance cost, plus a predictable multi-year capital replacement schedule that ended the cycle of reactive purchasing.