In the future, hospital procurement experts expect purchasing to become even more professional: from databases with up to 50 reference products to e-procurement and electronic invoicing and thus a seamless procurement system. This increases the transparency of purchasing data enormously and thus improves negotiating power vis-à-vis suppliers.
Some purchasers expect that at some point the material will be booked directly to the patient and the costs per case will therefore also be clearly visible; at the same time, consumption should directly trigger replenishment. The introduction of DRGs is a first step in the direction of case-based accounting.
Cooperation is also set to change: entire regions are expected to merge. Strongly increased national networking and joint orders could become the norm in the future. However, in order for these future plans to be implemented, the incentives to save costs must be set correctly and further strengthened.
