Category Archives: Intermediaries/GPOs +
Premier Launches Healthcare Innovators Collaborative
To help life sciences organizations better understand ever-evolving healthcare delivery, measurement, financing and risk, the Premier healthcare alliance has launched the Healthcare Innovators Collaborative. The collaborative shares knowledge from health systems nationwide that are implementing accountable care organizations (ACOs), as well as Premier research on care coordination, new payment models, resource utilization and more. Five pioneering organizations specializing in pharmaceuticals, biotechnology, medical devices, laboratory and more have already joined the collaborative, including: ARUP Laboratories Inc., Salt Lake City; Bayer HealthCare Pharmaceuticals, Inc.; Baxter, Deerfield, Ill.; Eli Lilly and Company, Indianapolis; Integrated Healing Technologies LLC; and Johnson & Johnson Health Care [...]
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New Novation Report Highlights Emerging Cardiovascular Technologies
Novation has just released a report entitled, “Innovations in Cardiovascular Devices,” highlighting promising new technologies and trends in the cardiovascular field. “This is an exciting time in cardiology, where new technology is helping improve care and increase patient quality of life like never before,” said David Richman, Vice President, Sourcing Operations, Physician Preference, Novation. “This report provides member hospitals with the information about new and innovative technologies, such as renal denervation and aortic valve replacements, that will allow them to better serve patients and understand options, and will also impact their supply chain costs.” The report compiles the potential economic [...]
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GS1 Healthcare US Publishes New Guideline for Pharmaceutical Handling
The GS1 Healthcare U.S. Secure Supply Chain Task Force, consisting of more than 50 members from throughout the supply chain, has developed a guideline to identify and serialize pharmaceutical products using GS1 identification numbers. The guideline titled “Applying GS1 Standards to U.S. Pharmaceutical Supply Chain Business Processes to Support Serialization, Pedigree and Track & Trace” enables pharmaceutical companies to trace the movement of products through the U.S. pharmaceutical supply chain. The guideline focuses primarily on best practices and methodologies for product serialization and sharing pedigree and traceability data to support implementation for pending state regulations. Implementing GS1 Standards will contribute [...]
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GPO News –Premier Cuts Significant CRM Deals
This past week, Premier struck deals with 4 major players in the cardiac device market for several cardiac rhythm management (CRM) device product groups. The suppliers include, Boston Scientific, Biotronik, Medtronic and Oscor –all have agreed to make selected CRM devices available to members of the Premier network. According to a prepared statement, the deal took effect on February 1 and will expand the variety of CRM therapies available to Premier members. In a separate deal that also took effect on Feb.1, Premier cut a new deal for various surgical supply instruments. In other GPO news, HealthTrust finalized deals with [...]
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NHS Gets Dinged Again in New Report –UK Health System Not Keeping Pace
In a study released just today, the UK health system is falling behind its peers in reducing early death and disease. Researchers who compared Britain’s health performance since 1990 with 14 European Union countries plus Australia, Canada, Norway and the United States said its pace of decline in premature death was “persistently and significantly” behind the average –a finding they described as “startling.” Chris Murray, who led the work at the University of Washington, said Britain’s poor performance was partly due to dramatic increases in Alzheimer’s disease and in drug and alcohol abuse problems, and to a failure to tackle [...]
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Asian Demand Drives Expansion of Global Diagnostic Cardiology Device Market
In medicine, a Holter monitor (often simply called a “Holter” or occasionally an ambulatory electrocardiography device) is a portable recording device for continuously monitoring various electrical activity of the cardiovascular system for at least 24 hours (often for two weeks at a time). The Holter’s most common use is for monitoring heart activity (electrocardiography or ECG). The Holter market in particular remains underdeveloped in China and India. However, with rising levels of cardiovascular disease in these countries, healthcare providers are shifting their focus from costly intervention to relatively inexpensive preventative care. Because of the non-invasive nature of the device—and its [...]
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First You Eat the Low Hanging Fruit –then the PPI
In a recent article in Healthcare Finance News, John Biggers, Premier’s SVP of group purchasing was interviewed and offered his ideas around “avoidable supply chain snafus.” In part, here’s where Mr. Biggers landed: Not involving physicians in supply chain discussions, especially related to physician preference items (PPIs): We just talked about the importance of change management in this morning’s post –and it’s interesting that managing change in the PPI categories of spend was at the top of his list. “Not only do PPIs account for an estimated 40 percent of a typical supply budget, but they also present a potential [...]
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University Health System Selects MedAssets
MedAssets (NASDAQ: MDAS) today announced that University Health System (UHS), the third largest public health system in Texas, has agreed to a longer-term, multi-year, comprehensive agreement. It’s a reward for a job well-done because to date, MedAssets has already cut $13 million in supply expenses and accelerated an additional $14 million in cash flow, based on its revenue cycle management solutions. “Anticipating the negative financial impact of healthcare reform, University Health System was looking for a single, comprehensive source for a cost-effective suite of data and technology-enabled services to quickly improve our health system’s clinical, operational and financial capabilities,” said [...]
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Insurance Exchange Contracts Getting Awarded –Unfortuantely, No Surprises
Say what you will about “the government takeover of healthcare,” but private companies are building the infrastructure of the online health insurance marketplaces –and winning contracts worth hundreds of millions to do so. Not that I have anything against the following companies that are getting all the business, but let’s hope that the same old names don’t deliver the same old, compromised solutions: Deloitte Consulting, part of the Big Four accounting giant headquartered in New York, won four state contracts to set up the information technology systems at the heart of the marketplaces. Deloitte’s contracts with Connecticut, Kentucky, Rhode Island and [...]
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Cardinal To Acquire AssuraMed, Direct-To-Home Distributor for $2.07B
Late last week, Cardinal Health announced plans to acquire privately held AssuraMed, another Ohio-based healthcare concern and leading provider of medical supplies to chronically ill patients in the home. The price? $2.07 billion. The acquisition will be financed with a combination of $1.3 billion in new senior unsecured notes and the remainder in cash. The deal is expected to close by early April this year. “AssuraMed is a natural extension of the Cardinal Health businesses and of our mission to be essential to care. The acquisition of this industry leader allows us to serve the growing number of Americans treated in [...]
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HGPII Releases 7th Annual Report –”GPO State of the Nation”
The Healthcare Group Purchasing Industry Initiative (HGPII) was founded in 2005 as a nonprofit 501(c)(6) organization by the chief executives of nine healthcare group purchasing organizations (GPOs). HGPII’s charter is to remain “a private, voluntary, non-partisan, non-profit organization, dedicated exclusively to transparency of business practices and the promotion of ethics and conduct. It is not a trade organization and does not lobby on behalf of the industry.” Despite common membership, HGPII is distinct from the Healthcare Supply Chain Association (HSCA), formerly known as the Healthcare Industry Group Purchasing Association (HIGPA). HSCA is a broad-based trade association. Just to make sure [...]
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Gag Clauses Have Got To Go
In 2007, the Transparency in Medical Device Pricing Act, federal legislation designed to bring some transparency to device prices, was introduced. The act would have required device manufacturers to regularly report to CMS the mean and median prices for devices –and the information would then be posted on the Internet. It should have put an end to the negotiation advantage –and self-serving mess– the device-makers cleverly engineered for themselves, but nothing ever happened. In most sectors of the economy, technological innovation lowers costs by improving productivity and efficiency. Not so in healthcare. Ironically, although orthopedic and cardiac surgery service lines [...]
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GHX in the News – Derek Smith Named Provider Pro to Know
The editors of Supply & Demand Chain Executive magazine have chosen Derek Smith, newly appointed chief commercial officer for GHX, as a 2013 “Provider Pro to Know” for his work in driving the development of software solutions that create a more connected, efficient and streamlined supply chain infrastructure for the healthcare industry. Honored as a “Provider Pro to Know,” Smith is leading an effort at GHX to address what healthcare providers and suppliers say is one of their biggest challenges – the highly manual, disjointed and duplicative processes surrounding the use of implantable medical devices (e.g. hips, knees, cardiac stents, [...]
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Cleveland Clinic/VHA Joint Venture Will Be Transformative
The Cleveland Clinic, a long time member of Premier, has left the roost. It has entered into a joint venture with VHA that the parties are saying, “will transform the traditional group purchasing approach into a strategic sourcing model.” The joint venture has been structured as a LLC. It is being organized to knock the lid off PPI costs –with a particular emphasis on implantables. The idea isn’t new. For example, SharedClarity is the result of a partnership that brought together UnitedHealthcare, Dignity Health, and 11 additional health systems. More than just aggregating demand to more competitively source PPI, they [...]
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GHX and Grand & Toy Join Forces to Put the Emphasis on Sustainability For SCM Efficiency
Canada-based B2B solutions provider Grand & Toy has joined the GHX electronic trading exchange. And not surprising when coming from our friends to the north, the emphasis will be on driving automation and enhanced collaboration throughout the supply chain –with “sustainability” as the driving context. The deal provides Grand & Toy a way to offer its Canadian healthcare customers the ability to process a complete set of electronic data interchange (EDI) transactions through the GHX Exchange, which includes purchase orders, purchase order acknowledgements, advanced shipment notifications and invoices. The entire transaction set. “By automating previously manual processes, both Grand & [...]
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Premier Recognizes Texas Health Resources with 2013 Richard Norling Award for Excellence
Texas Health is the sole winner among more than 2,700 of the nation’s leading hospitals that are members of the Premier healthcare alliance. The award honors the system that has advanced the alliance’s work the most during the past year through leadership and collaboration with other health systems. “Texas Health has been a true partner since joining the alliance 15 years ago, setting care delivery standards and then sharing best practices and lessons learned to the benefit of communities nationwide,” said Premier President and CEO Susan DeVore. “They spearhead our efforts to leverage the power of collaboration to achieve higher [...]
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- Healthcare in the Cloud: Forecast Still Hazy : HIMSS 2013: Top Takeaways Gathering Clouds said: [...] to David McCament’s mind, the future of healthcare cloud is not so clear. In a gue... more
- Time Definite Logistics –MNX Expands Global Network and Adds Track & Trace : Daniel said: Everything is very open with a precise description of the issues. It was definitely inform... more
- Varian Runs a “Clinic” in Effective Lobbying –Harry Reid Rides Shotgun : Thomas Finn said: Thanks for your comment Bo. I do not fully comprehend the differences between the two opti... more
- Varian Runs a “Clinic” in Effective Lobbying –Harry Reid Rides Shotgun : Barton 'Bo' Cooke said: Tom, you nailed it. This rider, put in at the last minute and was rushed into the Congres... more
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