2021 Winners

RWJBarnabas Health upgraded MetaTrade to Order Trust and optimized NuVia and CCXpert. Through Order Trust, the organization was able to increase their PO Trading Partners from 328 to 409 in just one year. During 2021, the RWJB Team worked closely with their GHX CSM to ensure all their solutions were optimized to the fullest potential. They fully leveraged NuVia and CCXpert, resulting in a reduction in Part Number and UOM exceptions that fell below the Top 50 metric. The RWJB team also increased their contract utilization rate to 80%. 

In 2021, UC Davis Health created a sustainable model that delivers results. The work that UC Davis did leading up to 2021 truly laid the foundation for driving better patient outcomes by enabling leadership to leverage data to generate actionable analytics. The UC Davis Health Supply Chain team has been able to successfully demonstrate their ability to drive down costs and implement business processes to drive enhanced performance within their organization. UC Davis Health has kept their focus on continuous improvement in Supply Chain and increasing their position within the GHX Top 50 rankings by targeting areas including:

• Increased EDI trading partners and EDI PO volume
• Loaded local agreements in contract system to reduce price/contract price exceptions
• Continuously reviewed exceptions to correct and reduce catalog numbers, UOM, and pricing exceptions

In 2021, UCI Health focused on increasing efficiency and automation across their supply chain. To enhance the efficiency of their procure-to-pay process, they:

• Onboarded over 500 EDI suppliers and registered over 80 additional suppliers  
• Processed more rush orders through EDI to increase the total number of POs being transmitted electronically
• Implemented a proactive path to issue resolution, inclusive of daily monitoring of potential exceptions, reducing the total number of exceptions to a manageable level for the team to handle
• Leveraged GHX Order Trust to significantly increase vendor response rate from 63% to 96% on average, so that the UCI Health team could focus on more strategic initiatives
• Adopted GHX Vendormate to monitor and validate vendor compliance for HIPAA clearance to ensure care was delivered in an optimal manner

TransForm Shared Service Organization continues to meet the needs of its membership through standardization of contracts between Acute facilities and Community Care. This unique strategy promotes success throughout the entire continuum of care, optimizing value-based procurement strategies, lowering costs, and contributing to enhanced patient care experience. TransForm has been the recipient of the Canadian Provider of the Year award 5 of the last 6 years.

During 2021, Medline Industries focused on driving automation across the GHX network to deliver efficiencies both internally and for their customers’ benefit. They created easy solutions such as implementing automation for over 40 million business transactions with customers and partners. This reduced all parties’ costs of doing business, allowing resources to be redirected to patients served. Medline proactively monitors their entire e-commerce ecosystem, ensuring the highest levels of system performance and customer experience. 

Hologic continues to raise the bar in eCommerce excellence and customer service by driving order and transaction automation. In 2021, Hologic worked to improve their customer’s visibility into their order process by increasing the availability of the Advanced Ship Notice and significantly decreasing the return time on the Purchase Order Acknowledgment. This ensures a world-class customer experience by driving as many automated orders through GHX as possible, enabling their team to focus on timely resolution of order discrepancies and higher value customer needs, enhancing their experience overall. 

Stryker Canada consolidated the acquisition of Wright Medical products into their larger portfolio, working towards greater ease for their customer base, while continually exploring and embracing new solutions. They achieved double digit growth across all business processes for 2021, ending with a recordbreaking 14% growth with purchase orders, and a 41% increase with invoices. This is the highest growth they have experienced in any given quarter ever! This growth is a testament to their collaboration and dedication to automation in the Canadian Healthcare market.

Abbott Laboratories and the American Diabetes Association® (ADA) launched their first joint community health partnership in conjunction with the National Center for Urban Solutions (NCUS). As part of the program, NCUS will provide up to 150 Black adults living with diabetes in the Columbus community with health education and access to Abbott’s FreeStyle Libre flash glucose monitoring technology. 

ADA’s Health Equity Now platform aims to ensure that the more than 122 million Americans living with diabetes and prediabetes 2, along with millions more at risk for diabetes, have equal access to health resources in cost, care, cure, community, and cuisine that can create a future without unjust health disparities. Abbott’s FreeStyle Libre technology was built with access and affordability in mind to make it broadly available to all people with diabetes. 

Fill rates from Stanford Health Care’s distribution partner dropped precipitously from an average of 96% down to the low 70’s. Stanford Health Care worked to manage the fill-rate disruptions through the utilization of new processes, data, and technology. This work successfully kept their internal fill-to-the-bin rate at 98%, despite 20-30% of supplies ordered not filling daily. By improving processes, the group increased approvals of clinically accepted products by 300% from 2019 to 2022. 

This innovative approach, led by Senior Manager of Supply Chain Analytics Andrew Smith, was key to their success, forming cross-collaborations as well as improving communication channels. Their approach resulted in outcomes that increased confidence within the clinician community, as clinicians now feel safer, armed with appropriate PPE and vaccine supplies, curtailing their top concern throughout 2020. They have confidence in knowing they have the supplies needed to provide the superlative care and outcomes that patients expect and deserve.

KEY CONTRIBUTOR: Andrew Smith, Senior Manager, Systems and Analytics, Stanford Health Care

The Medtronic Lung Health Global Education Team launched a new version of their integrated lung biopsy tower, the ILLUMISITETM Platform, to customers amidst the pandemic without having to travel, by utilizing Explorer Surgical. The organization focused on scaling its virtual training and case support program to drive successful patient outcomes. This innovative approach allowed Medtronic to: 

• Build on its domestic success 
• Reduce significant international travel expenses 
• Prevent staff from enduring a 21-day quarantine tied to traveling abroad 
• Continue to expand its digital remote case management program 

Jodi Weinzetl, Sr. Global Education and Strategic Partnerships Director, was critical to Medtronic’s longer-term efforts as she and her team developed best practices for implementing remote technology solutions. Weinzetl serves as a true collaborator to move the industry forward.

KEY CONTRIBUTOR: Jodi Weinzetl, Sr. Global Education and Strategic Partnerships Director, Lung Health & Visualization, Medtronic

To create more certainty, eliminate lag times and incur less frustration associated with international manufacturing and shipping delays, Ochsner Health partnered with Trax Development to form a joint PPE manufacturing company called SafeSource Direct. This self-manufacturing venture in Broussard, LA, will bring over 2,200 jobs to the region by the end of 2023. Through SafeSource Direct, these manufacturing facilities will sell direct and create a foundation for a more independently sustainable health system. SafeSource Direct will manufacture, warehouse, and directly distribute quality PPE for healthcare and other industries to protect front-line workers, employees, and patients in Louisiana and nationwide. 

Ochsner Health demonstrates its commitments to the communities in which they serve by creating jobs, investing in people, and developing a solution that extends its reach beyond the healthcare industry and serves the U.S. 

KEY CONTRIBUTOR: Mark French, Vice President, Supply Chain & Resource Management, Ochsner Health

The transition to Cloud led by Jack Koczela would have been the story of the year for Froedtert Health had it not been for COVID-19. The day the switch to Cloud was made, Froedtert was off and running, not losing a single PO. Transitioning ERP systems in a pandemic environment presented its own set of challenges and opportunities. While users working remotely were able to leverage the cloud-based system to keep operations running, they lacked immediate access to co-workers to help speed technology adoption. Jack provided the leadership in a crisis/pandemic - displaying deliberate calm and optimism, making decisions amid uncertainty, demonstrating empathy, and communicating effectively.

Mark A. Van Sumeren may be most renowned during the last two years for his data-rich, innovative, and inventive “COVID-19 Report.” The daily newsletter reaches a host of influential healthcare clinical, financial, and operational leaders who rely on its accuracy and integrity to foster essential business decision-making. Mark tirelessly sent daily quantitative updates to the industry – sharing relevant information in an unbiased manner, ensuring an aggregated view of all that was occurring with COVID. 

Mark successfully created a quantitative method for sharing statistics in a neutral fashion while also infusing the communications with a blend of industry trends and insight. Mark helped many see the trends and plan for the unknowns. His data and insights provided a short- and longer-term perspective during an uncertain time. The COVID-19 Report was a navigational tool and Mark is a Healthcare Hero for creating it for the industry. 

Duke Health implemented an e-payables program to streamline the supplier payment process and earn them an estimated annual rebate of $2.1M. This equates to the hiring of 27 nurses at a salary of $80,000 each. 

By expanding their payment network, Duke can deliver incremental economic value through additional Provider/Supplier connections, further reducing the cost of healthcare. Duke has also recognized savings by working capital gains through float savings for card transactions, and cost avoidance by reducing checks. These programs reinforce the Duke culture of “Saving Money is Saving Lives.” They have delivered balanced economic value to both Duke and their suppliers, reducing the overall cost of healthcare. 

Trinity Health’s efficiencies in electronic invoicing enable their Procure-to-Pay Shared Service Organization to avoid passing on any internal cost allocations to its hospitals as rebates from electronic invoicing programs, exceeding the total cost to provide procurement and accounts payable services to the organization! These lower costs allow more dollars to flow to the bottom line of regional health ministries in the 22 states Trinity Health operates in, and as a result, $1.2 billion is returned to communities in the form of charity care and other community benefit programs. 

GE Healthcare massively scaled automation of their invoice-to-payment processing which allowed hospitals to automate the historically manual process across order to invoice to payment. 

As a result of this work, GE Healthcare’s process changes: 

Increased EDI invoices processed by GE through GHX by 92% YOY totaling $3.2B for 2021 

Increased payments processed by GE through GHX by 124% YOY in 2021 

Enabled ACH payment processing across all GE Healthcare divisions, while partnering with GE eCommerce teams to drive more EDI Invoice automation 

Supported strong hospital demand for holistic order-to-cash automation, driving down costs and increasing efficiencies for hospitals 

These process changes for GE resulted in the automation of historically manual processes for hospitals which minimizes barriers for hospitals to process payments faster and more efficiently. This resulted in greater efficiencies and lower costs for hospitals that ultimately impact the delivery of affordable patient care.

In moving towards a clinically integrated supply chain, Scripps Health has included physicians and clinicians as a key component of the decision-making process and has utilized tools to allow clinicians and physicians to review evidence at the time of the request. Liz Eisenberg, Clinical Value Analysis Director, has been the driving force behind Scripps’s efforts to fully incorporate evidence into the Value Analysis process at Scripps and has been instrumental in leading efforts to realign their committees and service lines. 

By using these tools to align on systemwide performance improvement ideas, Scripps has developed a compliance dashboard ensuring they are evaluating decisions not only based on cost, but on multiple types of patient cohorts, physician-led performance improvements, and clinical criteria based on evidence. Scripps has seen the value of having the experience of clinicians in their supply chain as well as having a governance structure lead by physician leadership to foster their clinically integrated supply chain.

KEY CONTRIBUTOR: Liz Eisenberg, Director, Clinical Value Analysis, Scripps Health

Providence has implemented vendor credentialing badge stations at all acute care locations and enabled digital badging at all 850+ non-acute care locations. Providence’s policy is no badge / no entry, ensuring that only registered and fully compliant vendor representatives print a badge before moving throughout their hallways. Providence has been at the forefront of COVID-19 credentialing requirements by: 

• Ensuring alignment with state mandates as they have been announced 
• Enabling COVID-19 screening questions that must be answered before a badge is printed 
• Regularly reviewing their active vendor list from their ERP to ensure it’s in alignment with the vendors registered in their credentialing program 
• Holding monthly utilization meetings with their Compliance Solutions Specialist to ensure alignment with all compliance and credentialing initiatives to identify gaps that need to be addressed 

At the end of the day, these commitments were put in place to ensure patient, visitor, and employee safety is always top of mind.

Richard Bagley has led Penn State Health’s initiative in becoming a Clinically Integrated Supply Chain team with a strong vision, incorporating key team members and departments to build a multifunctional team. The team comprises value analysis, supply chain, strategic sourcing, service line leads, clinician champions, CMOs, and ACMOs. His team’s commitment to being better and making a difference in the organization and to their patients and community is due to Richard’s leadership. 

Richard’s goal is to provide affordable healthcare to all the communities Penn State Health serves, through access to healthcare facilities. Penn State Health opened a new community hospital in 2021 and will be opening another in 2022. Richard and his team are actively involved in helping achieve this goal and will work to achieve a $10M annualized supplier savings goal over the next five years.