Centralized Versus Decentralized Purchasing of Medical Material

This study was conducted to determine if Department of Defense centralized procurement is more cost effective than local contracting in the acquisition on nonstandard medical materiel. Nonstandard requisitions were divided into two acquisition groups, centralized and local contracting. The differences in cost, order and ship time, and quality of service were compared. There was no significant difference in cost, a significant difference in order and ship time in favor of local purchase, and greater quality from the local contracting. This study found a definite cost effectiveness of local contracting. Workload between the two methods was not measured and the author recommended not increasing local purchasing until it can be studied. Keywords Health care Medical materiel procurement.