SMITHFIELD, R.I. (April 5, 2010) – Some of the best practices in the delivery of health care are found in the U.S. military, and one Bryant University professor is gathering the examples into a report that could guide policy decisions and help implement a more cost-effective and efficient health care delivery system.

Michael Gravier, assistant professor of marketing at Bryant University, is researching health-care logistics. As the second highest cost after labor, medical logistics comprises one of the most controllable cost areas in health care. “With the U.S. currently spending 15.2 percent of its GDP on health care, getting a handle on medical logistics costs is an important public management problem,” Gravier said.

Unlike the civilian health care delivery model, the military health care system was an early adopter of information technology and supply-chain management principles. As a result, some of the best health care outcomes per dollar spent per patient are found in military medicine, said Gravier, who served as an Air Force logistics specialist for 12 years before joining the faculty of Bryant University’s College of Business in 2007.

“Civilian health care is sort of the last frontier” for modern business practices, Gravier said. “Health care workers are highly motivated to make changes, but they want to know where to turn.”

By this summer, health care workers, policy makers and researchers will be able to turn to Gravier’s report. Using a $20,000 grant from the IBM Center for the Business of Government, Gravier is examining more than 2,000 research articles on military supply-chain logistics to determine which aspects can be applied immediately to civilian health care and which areas look promising but require more research.

His report, tentatively titled “Identifying Opportunities to Manage and Reduce Healthcare’s Most Controllable Cost Area: Logistics and Supply Chain Management (SCM),” will be distributed through the IBM Center for the Business of Government this summer.