Healthcare Matters

“Turning Rhetoric into Solutions.” When you visit TriSolve’s website, that’s the marketing tagline you’ll see. You gotta love it. Apparently, GHX liked it so much they bought the company. Here’s the press announcement:

–GHX continued its global expansion with the announcement of another healthcare acquisition in Europe, TriSolve Ltd. (Bradford, UK). This addition accompanies the company’s recent acquisition of the France-based Beep-N-Track solution (news release) for the upcoming GHX implantable device supply chain solution.

“GHX is focused on lowering the cost of healthcare and increasing supply chain efficiency not just in the U.S. but throughout Europe as well,” said Bruce Johnson, president and CEO of GHX. “This acquisition allows us to better serve our European client base, increase utilization of GHX software services and deliver on ambitious three-year European growth plans.”

TriSolve, founded in 2005 by three ex-KPMG consultants, has provided strategic counsel, hands-on practical help and support with system integration and change management to National Health Service (NHS) Trusts and suppliers. GHX is acquiring Trisolve’s employees which include ACMA and CPFA qualified accountants; MCIPS qualified procurement professionals; veteran business consultants; former-NHS managers and business transformation and project management specialists. TriSolve will continue to work for its existing customer base while expanding its core offerings to the GHX healthcare market from its offices in Bradford, UK.

“Healthcare organizations in Europe increasingly demand a complete Software as a Service solution. This acquisition provides GHX Europe with added capabilities to assist our clients in supply-side initiatives aimed at lowering costs, eradicating inefficiencies and automating processes,” said Michel van der Heijden, president, GHX Europe.

GHX Europe was founded in 2001 in Brussels, Belgium. Since then GHX Europe has become a European leader in enabling hospitals and suppliers to conduct business with a greater number of their trading partners through a single exchange. It currently operates in five countries: the United Kingdom, Germany, The Netherlands, Switzerland and Spain. Throughout these countries, more than 1,800 healthcare provider organizations and 330 suppliers are achieving cost savings and greater business efficiency using GHX core electronic trading exchange services and associated supply chain management solutions.–

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TriSolve is an entrenched and well-liked IT services provider to the National Health Service (NHS). Having run that gauntlet myself back in 2005, the value of working with an established entity –one that has already been through the competitive selection and contracting process—is impossible to overstate.

Although conjecture on my part, this acquisition sure seems very directed –like it was meant to enable a lot more than scale GHX’s general delivery capability in the UK. Rather, it foreshadows a major move between GHX and the NHS with TriSolve’s consultants and staffers playing the leading role in what will surely be a painfully challenging, large scale implementation.

If you think US providers are tough nuts to crack, try working with the NHS. If you think our reform debate has gotten ugly, check out what PM Cameron is dealing with on the other side of the pond. The cost cutting pressures being felt by the NHS chiefs these days have surely reached its crescendo, so the timing of this deal may well be perfect.

Hopefully, this latest acquisition by GHX will help accelerate its ability to deliver the NHS some badly needed supply chain infrastructure.  And if TriSolve is, in fact, expert at turning rhetoric into solutions, then GHX bought the right company for the job.

—Tom Finn