WESTMINSTER, Colo. – Feb. 17, 2004 – Child Health Corporation of America (CHCA), a business alliance of 41 of North America's leading children's hospitals, has signed a three-year agreement with Global Healthcare Exchange, LLC (GHX) to provide e-commerce services to its Owner Hospitals. The agreement makes it easier and less expensive for CHCA hospitals to implement and utilize GHX’s electronic trading exchange, enhanced with sourcing capabilities provided by Premier, and supply chain services. CHCA is one of the largest affiliate groups in the Premier group purchasing organization. With direct integration to GHX, CHCA hospitals can send and retrieve accurate purchasing information to improve supply chain efficiencies. “CHCA looks forward to working in partnership with GHX to expand the use of e-commerce among our children’s hospitals,” says Mike Bomstad, Vice President of Group Purchasing Services at CHCA. “This agreement will not only help our individual hospitals save money by automating the supply chain, it will also enhance CHCA’s ability to provide services that improve the strategic and competitive position of our Owner Hospitals.”
Participating CHCA hospitals will connect to GHX using the GHX Connect Plus™ integration tool. GHX Connect Plus easily creates secure integrations to a wide variety of ERP and materials management information systems (MMIS), making it an ideal solution for an organization like CHCA that has member facilities with different technological systems.
CHCA Owner Hospitals will be able to utilize a new technology being introduced by GHX and Premier to validate current contract pricing for products during the transactional process. This will not only eliminate the time-consuming task of manually keying contract data into their MMIS, but also help prevent price discrepancies that can lead to costly invoice reconciliations.
In addition to connectivity, GHX will enable participating CHCA Owners to synchronize their internal product data, such as item number and unit of measure, with that of suppliers, using the accuracy of the supplier-verified AllSource™ product content repository. GHX’s reporting capabilities will also enable CHCA and its hospitals to get an accurate and comprehensive view of purchasing history across disparate technological systems.
“We chose to work with GHX because of its technical capabilities in terms of connectivity, data synchronization and reporting, as well as its significant supplier participation, which can enhance collaboration across the entire supply chain,” adds Stephen Boyle, Director, Material Services, at Miami Children’s Hospital.
GHX already has more than 150 suppliers participating in the exchange and will work with CHCA to ensure participation by those manufacturers and distributors that specialize in pediatric healthcare. CHCA is planning a vendor conference in the near future to encourage those suppliers to participate in GHX.
“GHX is pleased to partner with an organization with the stature and integrity of CHCA, which represents some of the finest child healthcare providers anywhere,” says GHX Chief Executive Officer Mike Mahoney. “Together we can work with suppliers to advance the adoption and use of industry standards to further improve accuracy in the supply chain and facilitate electronic communication of information.”
About Child Health Corporation of America CHCA, headquartered in Overland Park, KS, is a business alliance of 41 of North America's leading children's hospitals that provides a range of products and services designed to reduce costs, increase revenue and enhance the competitive position of children's hospitals. Programs and services include group purchasing and supply chain management, pediatric data management, performance improvement and patient safety initiatives, web-based training programs and strategic planning.
CHCA has more than 20,000 physicians, 98,000 employees, $11 billion in revenue and $1.8 billion in overall medical/surgical and pharmaceutical products. Its Owner Hospitals include the nation’s largest and best-known not-for-profit children’s hospitals and health care systems in the United States and Canada. CHCA is recognized as the best-demonstrated purchasing program for children's hospitals, and is committed to implementing the Health Industry Group Purchasing Association (HIGPA) Code of Conduct. For more information, visit www.chca.com
About Global Healthcare Exchange
Global Healthcare Exchange, LLC (GHX) provides an open and neutral electronic trading exchange, along with complementary products and services, through which buyers and sellers can collaborate to improve efficiencies in the healthcare supply chain. GHX’s catalog and content services improve the accuracy of purchasing transactions, reducing many of the most common and costly problems in healthcare procurement, while the privately held company’s revenue neutral business model is designed to lower costs for all involved. GHX’s owners, strategic partners, and trading exchange participants are representative of the entire healthcare supply chain, including manufacturers and distributors; integrated delivery networks (IDNs), hospitals and ancillary healthcare facilities; group purchasing organizations and their proprietary healthcare trading exchanges; and supply chain technology companies. Equity owners of GHX include Johnson & Johnson Health Care; GE Medical Systems; Baxter Healthcare Corp.; Medtronic USA, Inc.; Abbott Exchange, Inc.; Siemens; Becton, Dickinson & Co.; Boston Scientific Corp.; Tyco Healthcare Group, LP; Guidant Corp.; C.R. Bard, Inc.; AmerisourceBergen Corp.; Cardinal Health, Inc.; Fisher Scientific International, Inc.; McKesson Corp.; B Braun Medical Inc.; Premier, Inc. and HCA. For more information visit www.ghx.com.