Healthcare Matters

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder –especially when it comes to data. SCM professionals, financial and operational executives may ultimately share common goals, but they also have very separate day to day interests. Each may require a different view of the same data before everyone can get on the same page.

The definition of “visibility” not only has a different meaning for each of these departments, it’s probably fair to say that when looking across the various disciplines and corresponding interests that define “supply chain,” you’ll hear different definitions of the same term. For example, while certain groups within SCM need to know the detailed state(s) of medical supplies from the factory through distribution and into inventory — all the way down the Point of Care (POC), financial executives may need to understand it in a bottom line context. And their staff may be interested in transactional metrics, not transit details.

With that said, I like the timing of the release of GHX’s new product, called “Provider Intelligence.” The company has significant new products in its pipeline scheduled for release early next year, so I think GHX serves its customer champions well by providing them with a new analysis tool –now– that can empower a wider provider audience.

Provider Intelligence is one of those applications that multiple departments (and/or different disciplines within SCM) with similar and different interests can effectively use to empower their individual performances –and provide evidence of their respective improvements. This tool can be configured with custom KPIs that can be shared across the organization and/or remain unique to specific departments. It doesn’t support one version of “visibility,” but as many as necessary.

Here’s the press release:

LOUISVILLE, Colo. – May 21, 2012 – GHX announced the addition of a new business intelligence application to its portfolio of products aimed at cutting healthcare costs by simplifying supply chain operations through automation. Provider Intelligence, a new cloud-based application that measures and tracks supply chain metrics, provides hospitals with greater visibility into operational and financial performance.

Managing the multitude of products, supplies and contracts in the supply chain is complex and time consuming. Provider Intelligence uses interactive graphs and charting tools to visually represent key performance indicators (KPIs), enabling providers to better prioritize supply chain efforts and initiatives for increased utilization and cost savings. Without this data, it’s difficult for organizations to set performance goals, benchmark against peers, and assess where efforts are being wasted or money is being lost.

“The pressure to cut costs in healthcare is greater than ever, and for a hospital, knowing where you can improve efficiencies within your existing infrastructure is key,” said Derek Smith, executive vice president, Marketing and Product Management, GHX. “In a single tool, Provider Intelligence gives hospitals insight into how they are doing operationally and financially, and it helps them determine which suppliers are more efficient to do business with.”

Based on client-configurable KPIs, Provider Intelligence assembles a healthcare organization’s data and delivers it via graphs and charts through GHX My Exchange, the common platform where more than 4,000 providers transact and access their data. Providers can view performance over time, making it easier to identify trends and enabling providers to set relevant targets for their organizations, whether a single hospital or a large multi-hospital system.

“We use Provider Intelligence to measure performance across the 12 hospitals we support,” said John Martin, director of Hospital Services for Queensway Carleton Hospital and regional lead for Champlain Health Supply Services (CHSS). “By benchmarking against ourselves and peers, we saw that we needed to lower cost per PO and improve contract utilization. Since March 2011, we’ve increased our contract validation rate by more than 30 percent for improved contract utilization and a reduction in overall spend.”

Provider Intelligence allows organizations to measure, track and set goals based on the following:

• e-Commerce growth for the purchase order cycle

•  Accounts payable automation through benchmarking and setting targets for electronic invoice trading partners

• Trading partner efficiencies by tracking e-Commerce exceptions (backorders, quantity, rejected, on hold, contract price, unit price, UOM, part number, not on PO and not on POA, recurring exceptions) with benchmarks and peer group experiences

• Contract utilization

• Off-contract spending in product areas with highest impact

• Product standardization opportunities through item classification

• Market pulse to track and be informed regarding the newest products entering the supply chain

• Productivity benchmarking within accounts payable and purchasing regarding lines processed and cost to manage the process

—–

–Tom Finn