Candy Wrappers & Your Vendor Partners

Have you ever noticed it’s a lot easier to be transparent when things are going well? When things aren’t going well, there are typically things in deep dark corners that you would prefer no one ever find, like my four year old son and the growing stack of candy wrappers I just recently stumbled upon under his bed.

Do you ever wonder how transparent your vendors are with KLAS? What did they say the first time we let them know we would be measuring their space? How are you feeling if your vendor said, “Great. We love to be measured. People will get to see how focused we are on delivery and how well our customers are doing.” What do you think your experience will be like with the vendor that says, “I think it would be better to measure us a year from now.” What about the vendor that is willing to share a list of their three reference sites, but not any of their other 150 customers? Do you start to think there may be some candy wrappers under the bed?

Well, we think you ought to know. KLAS will be introducing a new metric as part of our research, a vendor disclosure level. You’ll know who provides complete client lists for us to confidentially interview. You’ll know who tells us to take a hike when we ask to talk with clients. We measure them either way, but now we’ll shed more light on the personalities of these companies you are looking to partner with.

Most of our research comes outside of any lists that a vendor may or may not provide, but it certainly sends a message when a vendor is willing to be open and honest about where they stand. In this time of intense focus on healthcare IT, is your vendor one of those few that is crawling back into its shell hoping to keep those corners dark, or are they shining a light on every possible area looking to improve and solve the significant issues that healthcare faces?

Would you like to know how your vendor does? Just ask…