Healthcare Insights
Most common types of hospital RFPs
Hospitals issue requests for proposals (RFPs) to begin the vendor selection process for many different types of projects, products, and services.
What do hospitals issue RFPs for?
Hospitals use RFPs to announce purchasing plans and outline the specific requirements they might need. RFPs help hospitals protect the purchase and allows them to review multiple bids to find a suitable price point. The different types of RFPs a a hospital might issue include:
- Expanding or renovating facilities
- Implementing new technologies
- Purchasing durable medical equipment
- Seeking new food services contracts
- Supplementing specialty providers
How are hospital RFPs monitored?
The Definitive Healthcare HospitalView product tracks federal healthcare RFPs from the System for Award Management website and collects non-federal RFPs by monitoring state, local, and healthcare entity websites for RFPs and purchasing requests.
Between January 2021 and August 2024, we recorded more than 107,000 hospital RFPs. Clients across the healthcare industry can use information such as hospital RFP data for more targeted sales and marketing efforts. For example, a technology company might review software RFPs to understand hospitals’ current IT priorities.
To learn more about the types of services hospitals need, this list breaks down the most frequent categories for issued hospital RFPs January 2021 and August 2024.
| Rank | RFP category | Count of healthcare RFPs | Explore dataset |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Professional services | 33,215 | Explore |
| 2 | Medical/surgical equipment or supplies | 15,247 | Explore |
| 3 | Maintenance/facility management | 12,096 | Explore |
| 4 | Construction - new building/renovations/design | 7,385 | Explore |
| 5 | Technology services | 7,271 | Explore |
| 6 | Laboratory/blood related | 4,548 | Explore |
| 7 | Non-clinical supplies | 4,016 | Explore |
| 8 | Pharmacy | 2,733 | Explore |
| 9 | Physician services | 2,546 | Explore |
| 10 | Insurance | 2,507 | Explore |
| 11 | Transportation services | 2,318 | Explore |
| 12 | Technology software | 2,209 | Explore |
| 13 | Radiology/medical imaging | 1,787 | Explore |
| 14 | Technology hardware (including telecommunications) | 1,673 | Explore |
| 15 | Consulting - strategic/financial | 1,595 | Explore |
| 16 | Food services | 1,269 | Explore |
| 17 | Real estate | 937 | Explore |
| 18 | Electronic health/medical records | 405 | Explore |
| 19 | Coding/patient billing/revenue cycle | 280 | Explore |
| 20 | Transcription services | 148 | Explore |
Fig. 1 Data is from the Definitive Healthcare HospitalView product. RFPs and hospital purchasing data are from a variety of sources and updated daily. Accessed August 2024.
What is the most common hospital RFP type?
Hospitals most often issue RFPs for professional services, which includes a variety of healthcare-related areas such as supplemental provider staffing, laundry services, and janitorial services. Professional services RFPs account for 31% of the hospital RFPs analyzed.
Medical/surgical supplies are the second most common RFP type, and the remaining top 10 categories include:
- Maintenance/facility management
- Construction - new building/renovations/design
- Technology services
- Laboratory/blood related
- Non-clinical supplies
- Physician services
- Pharmacy
- Insurance
Learn more
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