{"id":36,"date":"2025-10-21T13:13:11","date_gmt":"2025-10-21T13:13:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/research.unl.edu\/annualreport\/2025\/?p=36"},"modified":"2025-11-14T15:42:54","modified_gmt":"2025-11-14T15:42:54","slug":"business-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/research.unl.edu\/annualreport\/2025\/business-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Study suggests purchasing organizations could reduce health care costs"},"content":{"rendered":"
Research Impact<\/a><\/div>\n\n\n

Supply chain costs play a key role in rising health care expenses. Nebraska researchers have found that group purchasing organizations can help hold the line.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cHospitals use a plethora of critical supplies, such as syringes, radiology equipment, heart valves and coagulants, for daily operations,\u201d said Alok Kumar, Steve and Jennifer David Chair in Business and professor of marketing. \u201cControlling the costs of supplies is critical to delivering cost-effective care, because other avenues to cut costs are quite limited. Doctors must be paid a competitive salary, for example.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Managing supply chain costs often lies outside of hospitals\u2019 primary expertise, but GPOs help health care providers realize savings by aggregating purchases and negotiating discounts with manufacturers and distributors.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Researchers examined how hospitals can leverage the interplay between GPOs and their suppliers to enhance the hospitals’ supply chain performance, which should lead to more effective and efficient patient care, Kumar said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The study was published in the Journal of Marketing Research<\/em> and originated partly from dissertation work at Nebraska by Jenifer Skiba, a 2016 alumna who now works at Missouri State University.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

Controlling the costs of supplies is critical to delivering cost-effective care.<\/p>\nAlok Kumar<\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

The team found that GPOs benefit health providers, but their effectiveness varies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cGPOs can support hospitals\u2019 supply chain outcomes by helping benchmark the supplier\u2019s performance against the competition and fostering suppliers\u2019 participation in the broader GPO community, composed of hospitals and suppliers,\u201d said Amit Saini, chair of marketing and W.W. Marshall College Professor.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cHowever, these benefits vary by how dependent the hospital is on the supplier in question and how well the hospital can directly coordinate the supplier\u2019s deliverables on its own.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The findings also could have implications for other industries like manufacturing, retail and food production that rely on collective buying groups.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The study represents a major academic milestone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt is the first paper within marketing \u2013 and likely across disciplines \u2013 to comprehensively analyze the governance role of organizational collectivities like GPOs using empirical data,\u201d Saini said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n\n

Additional Content<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
\n
Nebraska Today<\/a><\/div>\n\n\n\n
Journal article<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n
Affordability<\/a>, <\/span>Alok Kumar<\/a>, <\/span>Amit Saini<\/a>, <\/span>Breakthroughs<\/a>, <\/span>Business<\/a>, <\/span>Health Care<\/a>, <\/span>Marketing<\/a><\/div>\n\n\n

From left: Amit Saini and Alok Kumar<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Nebraska marketing scholars Alok Kumar and Amit Saini found that group purchasing organizations can play a key role in reducing health care expenses and enhancing patient care. Working in partnership with hospitals, GPOs realize savings by aggregating purchases and negotiating discounts with manufacturers and distributors.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":221,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[144,141,143,182,19,107,142],"class_list":["post-36","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-research-impact","tag-affordability","tag-alok-kumar","tag-amit-saini","tag-breakthroughs","tag-business","tag-health-care","tag-marketing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/research.unl.edu\/annualreport\/2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/research.unl.edu\/annualreport\/2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/research.unl.edu\/annualreport\/2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/research.unl.edu\/annualreport\/2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/research.unl.edu\/annualreport\/2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=36"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/research.unl.edu\/annualreport\/2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":503,"href":"https:\/\/research.unl.edu\/annualreport\/2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36\/revisions\/503"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/research.unl.edu\/annualreport\/2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/221"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/research.unl.edu\/annualreport\/2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/research.unl.edu\/annualreport\/2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=36"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/research.unl.edu\/annualreport\/2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}