Non-acute providers operate in one of the most cost-sensitive environments in healthcare. Leaders face the challenge of maintaining high-quality care while navigating complex supply chains and rising patient demand.
To address these pressures, outpatient facilities require more than just conventional cost-cutting. They need optimized procurement strategies that serve as a lever for long-term growth. However, achieving this level of transformation is no small feat and requires the support of a dedicated and proactive partner.
For Duly Health and Care (Duly), forging a dynamic partnership with AdvantageTrust – a division of HealthTrust Performance Group – helped deliver “speed-to-savings” as part of their procurement strategy, resulting in more than $4 million in verified savings in less than a year, and setting a new benchmark for operational excellence across Duly’s network of over 150 facilities. These savings have allowed the organization to reinvest in its operations, with the goal of creating greater accessibility and lowering costs for the patients it serves.
Price Reductions, Supplier Consolidation, and Efficiency Gains
Supplier consolidation was one of the first areas where value was created – and one of the most impactful given the organization’s previous vendor, pricing, and contract term variabilities.
In collaboration with AdvantageTrust – Duly first tackled high-spend categories such as medical and surgical products for cost savings. Supplier consolidation, standardization, and robust contract lifecycle management soon made their way across a variety of supplies and services. Duly also looked beyond traditional medical-surgical, one example is they were able to reduce beverage service vendors from 14 to 1, lowering costs and simplifying logistics dramatically by cutting annual invoice volume in that category from 23,000 to 120.
Going beyond supply categories, Duly also optimized IT services. When Windows 10 reached its end-of-support, AdvantageTrust supported the transition of 1,700 devices to Windows 11-compatible Dell hardware. The project reduced maintenance costs, improved device management, ensured scalability, and avoided more than $240,000 in potential tariffs and $200,000 in unit costs – all without disruption to patient care.”
Duly worked with AdvantageTrust to address other critical areas with discipline and vision. The organization converted pharmacy pricing and flu shot agreements under new frameworks, which delivered consistency across all care sites. It also transitioned medical-surgical supply contracts to standardized terms, resulting in greater value and elevated product quality throughout its network. In each case, the goal was the same: streamline the supplier base, create clearer oversight, and secure only the highest-quality products and services at the most favorable terms.
Reflecting on the partnership, Steve Samaan, Vice President of Procurement at Duly Health and Care, noted, “One of the differences we have experienced working with AdvantageTrust has been their collaboration and proactiveness to bring solutions to our company. Through our transition, in lightning speed, we had much-needed efficiency in our system, that we could not have done without their partnership and the Duly Supply Chain, Procurement and Operations team members – THANK YOU!”
End-to-End GPO Support
With AdvantageTrust’s end-to-end support, Duly was able to optimize its supplier base and contracts with agility, all while ensuring patient care remained uninterrupted. However, this collaborative approach extended beyond contract transitions to include hands-on guidance and expertise, targeted training for category managers, and a carefully orchestrated process that minimized disruptions for clinicians, staff, and patients.
Another cornerstone of the partnership’s success is AdvantageTrust’s commitment to data-driven decision-making. By leveraging analytics and spend visibility, Duly could pinpoint areas of spend leakage, refine total cost of ownership, and monitor performance across all service lines. This heightened transparency continues to influence how Duly approaches budgeting and sourcing, ensuring that realized savings are not a short-lived benefit but a foundation for ongoing reinvestment in community care and organizational growth.
A Blueprint for Operational Distinction
Duly and AdvantageTrust’s multifaceted partnership is more than a story of savings – it offers a blueprint for how outpatient providers can closely collaborate with their GPO to drive operational transformation and value creation. Duly not only surpassed aggressive savings goals and set a new operational standard, but it also drove bottom-line growth and created opportunities to expand patient care in new communities.
For other non-acute networks, it is important to partner with a GPO that has a deep understanding of the provider’s business, an innate ability to solve problems with the right resources, and a strong, continuous support system.
When asked what advice he would give to organizations considering a GPO partnership, Samaan shared, “If you’re waiting to onboard a GPO, don’t. Just take the leap and get started.”
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