What Does Each Value Analysis Committee Member Want?

A value analysis committee wants proof that your device helps every seat at the table, not just the doctor who asked for it. There are often about eight people in the room, and each one has a different question. Map your product to each of them before the meeting, because it only takes one person to stall it.

Who sits on the committee?

Expect a physician and a department head, who are usually fairly aligned. Then procurement and finance. Then someone looking at quality of care, which might be nursing, a quality officer or the chief medical officer. Sometimes infection control. Anyone who is affected by the change may have a voice in the room.

What does each person want to hear?

• Procurement wants the lowest cost possible.
• Finance wants the best return on the money, whether that's more reimbursement or much lower cost.
• Quality, nursing and the chief medical officer want to see what happens to length of stay with the technology and without it.
• The department head thinks about training, workflow and complexity. How do I train all my staff on this?
• The physician wants the best outcome possible and the tools to deliver it.

If one person you never spoke with has an unanswered question, the decision can come back as "not enough information," and you get sent back into the process. If you're not talking to the people on the committee, you won't know who is holding it up, or what they need you to answer.

When you do find the person holding it up, ask a simple question: how can I help you understand the value this brings to your hospital? Then answer in their terms, not yours. Finance doesn't want your clinical slide. The department head doesn't want your ROI model. Each seat needs its own one-line answer and its own proof.

How do I build the money case?

Frame it as spend here, save there. If the disposable adds $1,000 or $2,000 to a case, show where the hospital saves $5,000, $10,000 or $20,000 somewhere else. On one call we worked from an ICU cost of about $10,000 a day. The hospital typically gets one lump-sum DRG payment for the stay, so every extra day eats into it. Somebody in that room knows the exact day of a stay when the hospital starts losing money. Your job is to show how your technology helps keep the stay on the right side of that line.

If your device isn't separately billable, it has to fit inside the DRG the patient already comes in with. That's why I tell founders to run a few case studies early. You will have to deal with the money question, and your own case data is how you answer it.

Expect the formulary question too. You're competing with products already on the shelf, and committees often ask what they can get rid of if they bring you in. Is it better care? More revenue? More efficient? Cheaper? Most startups aren't prepared to answer those questions. A breakthrough technology designation from a GPO can also change how the committee sees you, because you arrive with an outside stamp of approval.

Why does adoption matter to the committee?

Someone in that room is thinking about the rollout. How do you get thousands of nurses to use a new technology? The investment only pays off if adoption reaches something like 75% to 95% of the cases where it could be used. So show the training plan, and show how few steps the product takes. Count the clicks. The easier it is to use, the easier it is to approve.

Where to start

Make a one-page grid. Put each committee seat down the side, and across the top their main question, your answer and your evidence. Fill the gaps with a case study. Then find out who actually sits on the committee at your first target hospital, and ask your physician champion to help you reach each one before the meeting.