Customer Stories

Yale New Haven Identifies $3M in Savings, Cuts Supply Disruption Time in Half

YNHHS2

Yale New Haven Health (YNHHS), a leading academic health system with five hospitals and a large ambulatory network across Connecticut, and in southern Rhode Island and Westchester County, NY, faced sustained pressure on its supply chain in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. The health system manages 158,417 unique items and deal with more than 30 disrupted items across the system per week.

“In an increasingly challenging healthcare environment, we’re looking for partners who can help us weather the financial storm. Clarium is foundational to our strategy, giving us critical insights into our supply chain that has led to direct cost savings."
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Arnim Dontes
Chief Financial Officer
Yale New Haven Health

Arnim Dontes
Chief Financial Officer
Yale New Haven Health

The Challenge

In the wake of the pandemic, YNHHS was struggling with a decentralized system that relied on team “elbow grease”: Supply disruptions were managed out of at least 4 different systems, and there were no shared processes for sourcing substitute items.

In parallel, YNHHS identified a multimillion-dollar savings opportunity by eliminating the overpurchasing of surgical supplies used in the OR. Every surgeon has a list of requested supplies for the procedures they perform, which are stored on surgical “preference cards” in the EHR. Over time, supply lists become bloated and out of date, leading to overordering — supplies were brought into the OR, opened, but never used. With 34,503 unique preference cards and supply lists, ensuring the accuracy of all supply requests was an impossible task without an automated, scalable solution.

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158,417

unique items (SKUs) managed by YNHHS 

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14+

days on average to resolve a single supply disruption

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30+

disrupted items per week across the system 

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34,502

unique surgical preference cards that required review

The Solution

YNHHS and Clarium worked in close partnership to co-build several flagship Clarium Platform capabilities. To ensure Clarium solved pain points for users and stakeholders across the system, YNHHS included partners from supply chain, value analysis, and clinical teams throughout the development process. The Clarium and YNHHS teams met weekly to sketch out requirements, review prototypes, and provide feedback on beta products. 

Together, YNHHS helped Clarium build and deploy flagship capabilities, including:

Supply Chain Control Tower

Supply Chain Control Tower

Centralized platform to monitor supply disruptions across all 158,417 items used by YNHHS. A unified data layer that aggregates all critical product information, risk signals, and purchasing context. Proprietary impact scores help YNHHS teams focus on the highest-risk disruption events, and crowdsourced disruption signals enable faster response to shortages.

Product Substitute Library

Product Substitute Library

Access to a library of Clarium-curated product substitute options to expedite disrupted product replacement workflows. Substitutes are sourced from Clarium partner databases and AI-generated recommendations.

Automated Preference Card Optimization

Automated Preference Card Optimization

Analyzed thousands of surgical preference cards against historic case utilization data to identify outdated items and recommend updates to preference cards that would reduce waste and overordering.

Task Management & Collaboration Workflows

Task Management & Collaboration Workflows

Task assignment queues to clarify team roles and prioritize tasks for users across the system. Built-in collaboration features — @mentions, approval workflows, and more — streamline back-and-forth between supply chain, value analysis, and clinical teams.

“The beauty of Clarium lies in its ability to simplify and automate complex processes. Teams are now spending time where it matters most — with our patients."

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Dr. Margaret Rose
Medical Director for Corporate Supply Chain
Yale New Haven Health

Dr. Margaret Rose
Medical Director for Corporate Supply Chain
Yale New Haven Health

The Impact

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$3.1M

in identified supply waste on preference cards, with $1.3M in savings already realized to date

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50% Reduction

in supply disruption time to resolution (from 14 days to 7 days) 

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88%

reduction in time to source and approve a new substitute (from 22 days to 2.5 days)

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6x Growth

in YNHHS’ library of product substitutes, expediting item swap-outs in the event of a product disruption

YNHHS and Clarium are continuing to expand the partnership across the platform, with initiatives slated to include:

Agentic Automation

Targeting manually-intensive supply tasks with agents, including match exceptions and product discontinuation task management.

Supplier Transparency

Equipping YNHHS teams with unprecedented data on supplier performance, including disruption rates, lead time accuracy, and OTIF rates.

Service Line Supply Standardization

Expanding on the preference card program to identify broader surgical supply standardization, using Clarium’s proprietary algorithms. 


Targeting manually-intensive supply tasks with agents, including match exceptions and product discontinuation task management.

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Equipping YNHHS teams with unprecedented data on supplier performance, including disruption rates, lead time accuracy, and OTIF rates.

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Expanding on the preference card program to identify broader surgical supply standardization, using Clarium’s proprietary algorithms. 

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