Sustainable Procurement
Making Every Purchase Matter
Sustainable healthcare procurement goes beyond simply acquiring the right equipment and supplies at the right price.
Best Practices in Sustainable Procurement
When you partner with the experts at Oakwell, we take advantage of the following best practices:
Cost and Spend Analyses
Oakwell considers the total cost of material and equipment ownership, including acquisition, operation, maintenance, and disposal when evaluating products and services. Identifying excess spend or resource intensive products helps define drivers for both lower costs and lower environmental impacts.
Supply Chain Partnerships and Engagement
We guide your system’s collaboration with suppliers, GPO’s, industry groups, and peers to leverage the industry’s collective purchasing power and increase availability of more sustainable products.
Sustainable Product Evaluation
We prioritize products from responsibly sourced materials, made with energy-efficient manufacturing and design, and lower impacts from manufacturing through disposal, reducing your environmental footprint.
Responsible and Local Sourcing
We help you form partnerships to ensure ethical practices (e.g., fair labor) across your supplier base, environmental stewardship in production processes, and local products and services to reduce transportation emissions and support local economies.
Waste Reduction
It’s important to look upstream at sourcing strategies that minimize packaging waste and provide opportunities for product reuse, take back, or recycling.
How Oakwell Optimizes Sustainable Procurement
The steps we take to optimize your sustainable procurement practices include:
Develop a Sustainable Procurement Strategy
Oakwell collaborates with you using strategic planning tools to create a customized action plan and phased approach to meet your supply chain and sustainability goals through high impact procurement categories.
Supplier Relationship Management
We help you identify, evaluate, select and manage suppliers to maximize the value of transactions and take a partnership approach to delivering sustainability outcomes for both parties.
Sustainable Procurement Policy
To embed best practices into your RFX processes, Oakwell helps create a standalone policy or embeds language into existing procurement policies so suppliers and stakeholders understand your health system’s priorities.
Procurement Tracking and Data Management
Oakwell’s technology and industry partnerships combine to help collect and analyze targeted purchasing data from across your facilities and vendors to streamline analyses for improvements and cost savings.
Assess Product Life Cycles
We assist in measuring the environmental footprint, social impact, and total cost of ownership of products, equipment, and supplies.
Implement & Monitor Revised Practices
Oakwell provides ongoing support to make sure your sustainable healthcare procurement practices remain aligned with your sustainability goals, assessing progress within business reviews, and supporting the RFX processes to achieve targeted outcomes.
