Category Archives: Supply Chain tool vendors
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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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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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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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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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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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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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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A.T. Kearney in the News: Heavy Hitter Joins Healthcare Practice
A.T. Kearney is on a very short list of companies that can credibly assert that it not only helped establish strategic sourcing as a discrete corporate function, but that it made strategic sourcing a CEO-agenda issue. Former execs of A.T. Kearney –much like GE—conspicuously dot the landscape in high-ranking positions across many highly regarded supply chain management consultancies and similarly focused software companies. And there’s a reason for it. They produce. Like most experienced players at the top of their game, they can spot low hanging fruit faster than a hungry predator spots wounded prey. And what do they all [...]
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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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Varian Runs a “Clinic” in Effective Lobbying –Harry Reid Rides Shotgun
When lawmakers make last minute “inserts” and/or bury curious provisions “deep in the bowels” of an otherwise huge piece of legislation, there’s usually a reason for it, and it’s not because someone was forgetful. Let me put it this way, when you deliberately bury something “deep in the bowels” of something else, that “thing” you buried will generally carry a stench with it. A story will run in today’s WSJ where Alicia Mundy looks at a last-minute provision in the fiscal-cliff bill that sharply cut Medicare payments for Sweden’s Elekta AB EKTA-B.SK -0.36%, a maker of radiation tools, while leaving unchanged those [...]
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Monetizing the MOB (Medical Office Building) –New Approaches Emerging
As capital demand for new technologies and the need to be competitively equipped persist, healthcare systems are once again grappling with the idea of selling, or monetizing, their non-core assets to third parties. And at the top of everyone’s list is the medical office building (MOB) –to sell the MOB to a third-party leasing and/or property management firm. This isn’t anything new, but it’s one of the ideas that keeps recycling. In fact, and in addition to hospitals and health systems, many large physician groups that had previously elected to own their real estate are now cashing out. Now that [...]
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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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