Best of the Healthcare Supply Chain Honored at 2014 GHXcellence Awards

Healthcare industry casts its vote for most impactful supply chain leaders;top supply chain organizations recognized for proven, industry-leading performance and results
Louisville, CO — Tuesday, May 6, 2014

GHX today announced the winners of its 14th Annual GHXcellence Awards, honoring supply chain leaders that are driving significant savings and efficiency for their organizations, their trading partners and the healthcare industry through automation and best practices. The winners were honored today at the 2014 GHX Healthcare Supply Chain Summit in Philadelphia.

Again this year, GHX recognized an individual supply chain leader for his/her work in improving the business of healthcare with its GHXcellence Leadership Award. GHX also presented one provider and one supplier with its GHXcellence Industry Impact Awards, which acknowledge organizations that have cut healthcare costs through exceptional collaboration with GHX and their business partners, and by working with GHX to automate purchase orders (POs) and invoices, manage contract spend and increase electronic connections to trading partners.

In early 2014, GHX called on its community to submit nominations for the awards and then invited the entire healthcare industry to vote for the winners. This year’s winners are:

From the award nomination, “Locklair has demonstrated an ongoing commitment to making healthcare a better-run industry. Always willing to share his knowledge and lessons learned, he is a recognized leader who has truly made a difference within his organization and has helped other supply chain leaders improve their businesses. Leveraging GHX solutions, Locklair has led his team at McLeod Health on key process changes to improve data accuracy, increase automation, make educated purchasing decisions and address significant revenue leakage. A key component of this work has been Locklair’s work to foster collaboration across departments within the walls of McLeod Health and externally with the organization’s business partners.”

From the award nomination, “Through multiple acquisitions, Tenet acquired many disparate supply chain technologies and processes resulting in widely varied outcomes and utilization across the organization. The high volume of manually processed POs, invoices and metadata managed in multiple locations led to widespread transactional errors and discrepancies. To address this, Tenet began working with GHX on a strategic effort to improve operational efficiency, costs and transactional accuracy by consolidating services, standardizing e-commerce processes and increasing partner participation across its provider base. By increasing automation and improving transactional accuracy, Tenet has reduced overpayments by $2.3 million while reducing its workload by 10,809 hours.”

From the award nomination, “Zimmer faced challenges related to its order-to-cash process, including delays in PO receipt from providers after procedures were complete, high discrepancy rates for price/part/unit of measure (UOM), and low EDI utilization for consignment orders. In turn, providers were unable to leverage the three-way match process, which meant Zimmer had to reprocess and reprint invoices resulting in significant delays in payment. Zimmer participated in a pilot for the GHX Implantable Device Supply Chain (IDSC) solution with Sisters of Charity Leavenworth, during which it leveraged advanced case scheduling notifications and consumption signals prior to PO creation that contain information correlating directly to both the PO and sales order. With accurate, timely and comprehensive visibility into provider data, Zimmer was able to better serve its customers and boost efficiency in its business operations. Zimmer achieved a 100 percent reduction in procedure-to-PO time, 80 percent reduction in procedure-to-invoice time and 23 percent reduction in procedure-to-payment time.”

The remaining eight GHXcellence Awards were based on quantifiable performance using GHX solutions1, with organizations judged on metrics around success in automating business processes, using criteria such as increase in electronic POs, purchasing dollar volume and the number of electronic trading partners. This year’s winners are:

“Collaboration is the central theme among this year’s GHXcellence Award winners, with provider and supplier organizations demonstrating how they’ve leveraged the GHX collaborative community and common technology solutions to improve operations and drive down costs for themselves and their business partners,”said GHX president and CEO Bruce Johnson. “In these challenging times, all parties to the healthcare supply chain must come together to determine how they can collectively deliver high-quality, affordable patient care. The industry’s survival is dependent upon it. We at GHX are honored to play a role in facilitating this work.”

1 – These organizations are achieving quantifiable savings and improved supply chain performance using software and services from GHX. They may also be driving additional savings and results within their organizations based on other initiatives.
2 - View full Best 50 List here (2013 GHX Best 50 Providers)
3 - G-Fax is a GHX solution that converts faxed POs into EDI (Electronic Data Interchange) documents that can be received directly into a manufacturer or distributor’s ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) system

About GHX
Global Healthcare Exchange, LLC (GHX) is driving costs out of healthcare by transforming the healthcare supply chain. Working with providers and suppliers, GHX is accelerating change by providing a faster, more efficient and collaborative supply chain that will take billions of dollars out of the cost of healthcare. For more information, visit www.ghx.com and The Healthcare Hub.