# Hypothetical independent purchasing pilot charter

**Educational design only.** This is not a DenQAI membership agreement, operating cooperative, group purchasing organization, legal safe harbor, product approval, or authorization to exchange competitive information. An actual pilot requires fact-specific entity, antitrust, health-law, professional, privacy, security, tax, contracting, insurance, and operating review.

## Purpose

Help independently owned practices compare selected supplies and services using the same scope, usable-unit denominator, complete cost, sourcing evidence, and vendor-disclosure rules while preserving each practice’s clinical and competitive independence.

## Ideal member-control rules

1. Eligible members, voting rights, board authority, reserved powers, amendments, removal, conflicts, records, dissolution, and distribution of remaining assets are written before funds or data are accepted.
2. Members can inspect the funding model, vendor-selection method, disclosures, complaints, corrections, performance reports, and material changes.
3. Management cannot change clinical-autonomy, commercial-disclosure, data-use, no-pay-to-rank, competition, or exit rules without the required member approval and professional review.

## Clinical-autonomy ideal

- Vendor preference never controls diagnosis, treatment planning, material or laboratory choice, referral, appointment time, or patient communication.
- A clinician may choose a nonpreferred product or service for a documented clinical reason without retaliation or hidden loss of unrelated rights.
- Substitutions, shortages, recalls, defects, and complaints have a qualified clinical-review path.

## Commercial-transparency ideal

- Disclose every fee, rebate, credit, sponsorship, referral benefit, paid placement, data value, financing relationship, and related-party interest.
- Publish the vendor-selection method and separate sales compensation from evaluation.
- Deduct rebates from savings only after they are received and reconciled for the same period.
- Never let vendor payment secretly determine ranking or preferred status.

## Data and competition ideal

- Collect the minimum data needed for the defined purchasing job.
- Do not collect patient data, payer fees, contract-acceptance strategy, or identifiable current or future competitive intentions.
- Each practice decides independently whether, when, and from whom to buy.
- Purchasing participation is not used to coordinate payer participation, patient prices, employee pay, output, market allocation, or boycott conduct.
- Publish access, sharing, retention, deletion, incident, audit, export, and exit rules before intake.

## Value-measurement ideal

Savings use exact configuration, comparable volume, usable units, freight, tax, fees, labor, waste, returns, service, downtime, recurring cost, realized rebates, and switching cost. Reports show the baseline, denominator, period, exclusions, missing records, complaints, corrections, and practice-specific limits. No opaque vendor score or paid ranking is produced.

## Complaint, correction, and exit ideal

Members can submit a complaint without retaliation, see its owner and status, challenge an incorrect record, and receive a documented correction. Exit terms cover notice, open orders, data export, access revocation, vendor transition, continuity, surviving duties, and final accounting.

## Launch boundary

Do not launch until member control, clinical autonomy, commercial transparency, vendor independence, data governance, competition boundaries, specialized legal review, funding, service levels, complaint handling, correction, continuity, security, insurance, measurement, portability, exit, and dissolution each have an accountable owner, supporting record, qualified reviewer, test, and pause condition.