Category Archives: Procurement
GHXcellence Industry Awards Upcoming –Cast your Votes!
The practice of medicine and the politics of healthcare seem joined at the hip these days. Unfortunately, the continuous bickering feeds our collective fatigue with all that’s wrong with the industry. And what could be an easier target for the kind of cynicism I’m talking about than an awards ceremony? Why is it so true that we never seem to grow tired of lists that provide some kind of competitive ranking or for patting ourselves on the back for a job well done? It’s simple: because despite what George Clooney’s smug acceptance speech at last year’s Golden Globes reflected, human [...]
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ROI Exec talks about “Constructive Dissatisfaction”
For all the right reasons, e-procurement systems continue to gain traction in healthcare. Major providers have not only discovered the obvious benefits of providing an internal shopping experience, but they’re learning about the not-so-obvious ones. They’re learning that comprehensive source-to-settle solutions are an excellent way to drive product and contract compliance; that automating and controlling these processes is one of the best ways to turn identified opportunities into realized savings. Healthcare Matters would like to thank Matthew Mantel of Resource Optimization & Innovation (ROi) for the following guest post. ROI is widely considered one of the more advanced and integrated [...]
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Fixing Contracting Process –#1 HIDA Recommendation for Healthcare SCM
The HIDA Educational Foundation today released 15 key recommendations to help supply chain leaders anticipate and respond to trends including declining reimbursements, market consolidation, and healthcare reform. Top recommendations included improving contracting processes to reduce complexity and unproductive costs, linking products to outcomes, and championing data standards. The recommendations resulted from a year-long collaboration between the HIDA Educational Foundation, an affiliate of the Health Industry Distributors Association (HIDA), and McKinsey & Company. The top recommendation, “fix the contracting process,” reflects growing awareness of the unnecessary costs that inefficient and unproductive contracting practices add to all levels of the supply chain. [...]
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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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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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This Year’s HIMSS Discussion Priorities –Ovum’s 2013 Take
This coming week, Ovum, an information and communication technologies (ICT) specialized research and consulting firm, will be at the HIMSS conference in New Orleans. Bill Clinton is speaking, as a major activity of the Clinton Foundation is fighting childhood obesity. “Treating and preventing obesity-related diseases requires a profound shift to patient-centric care,” says Charlotte Davies, lead analyst of Ovum’s Healthcare practice. “This is a major strategic shift, and it has become the guiding force of the HIMSS’ agenda. Achieving this requires action across the board; a much more strategic approach to IT and service design, changes in legislation; addressing the [...]
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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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AMA and McKesson Team-Up to Improve Molecular Diagnostic Testing
The American Medical Association (AMA) and McKesson have entered into a licensing relationship to offer the industry a more consistent and transparent way to identify and track molecular diagnostic (MDx) tests. Under the agreement, McKesson Z-Code™ Identifiers will be grouped and indexed with corresponding molecular pathology codes in the AMA’s Current Procedural Terminology (CPT®) code set. With identifiers and codes working in tandem to create a comprehensive reference for identifying and tracking MDx tests, the healthcare industry can better understand the growth in this area to support advanced diagnostics innovation. Today, over 3,000 molecular and genetic diagnostics are marketed for clinical use. According to Frost & Sullivan, MDx is the [...]
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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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GHX Calling On Nominees for this Year’s GHXcellence Awards
For the second consecutive year, GHX is inviting its customers to submit nominations for one provider and one supplier organization to receive a GHXcellence Industry Impact Award. New this year, GHX is also inviting nominations for its 2012 GHXcellence Leadership Award, honoring an individual supply chain leader for his/her work in improving the business of healthcare. GHX customers can submit nominations until Friday, March 15 for both the GHXcellence Industry Impact Awards and GHXcellence Leadership Award through an online nomination form. However, voting for the GHXcellence Industry Impact Awards will be opened to all members of the healthcare industry from [...]
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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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ECRI Announces 2013 Supply Chain Excellence Awards
ECRI is a nonprofit healthcare-focused organization dedicated to promoting the application of objective research to determine which procedures, devices, drugs and processes yield the best results. They’ve been measuring provider performance, benchmarking and promoting best practices across the enterprise for the better part of 45 years, so the market’s recent emphasis on evidence-based standards has significantly raised the firm’s profile –and utility. ECRI recognition is a good thing, as both the U.S. Agency for Healthcare Research & Quality, as well as the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), recognize and collaborate with ECRI. “As our nation grapples with [...]
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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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Next Level Sourcing and Commodity Management
New Paper P2P and Working Capital
Services Procurement Innovation
ERP Procurement and Spend Management Applications
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