GHX Announces Healthcare’s First Virtual Item Master Solution for Electronic Health Record Systems

GHX Clinical ConneXion solves ‘source of truth’ for EHRs by connecting the industry’s largest repository of enriched and validated data to clinical documentation and patient billing
Louisville, CO — Monday, December 11, 2017

Global Healthcare Exchange, LLC (GHX) today announced a new cloud-based solution for healthcare that provides the critical connection between the supply chain and the electronic health record (EHR) applications used by more than 95% of healthcare providers in North America. GHX Clinical ConneXionSM is the first healthcare solution to provide a single source of truth for item information to support clinical documentation and patient billing, including supply and implant capture at the point of use. The first implementation is with Epic Enterprise EHR system.

Clinical ConneXion bridges the gap between best practice for item master management and the broad data needed for EHR clinical documentation and the associated downstream impact.

Most healthcare providers today require clinicians in procedural areas to document supplies and implants at the point of use directly into the EHR. However, the clinical environment generally requires a broader universe of products than is available in the item master. Every item that a clinician cannot find must be entered manually as a one-time supply, disrupting clinical workflow and efficiency. This inefficiency adds cost burdens to healthcare and diminishes the value of the data in the EHR when the data quality is in question.

Clinical ConneXion provides item data directly to the EHR by leveraging a healthcare provider’s item master and other data sources to reduce one-time supplies and associated charge reconciliation. The result is more accurate supply documentation, increased efficiency in the operating room, fewer missed charges, less clinician frustration, improved tracking of supplies, and total case costing insights. Clinical ConneXion allows hospitals to eliminate the unnecessary expansion of the supply chain item master which often occurs during integration to the EHR while leveraging more complete product data sourced directly from GHX’s comprehensive cloud catalog.

Franciscan Missionaries of Our Lady Health System (FMOLHS), a 1,799-bed hospital system in Baton Rouge, Louisiana is one of the customers using the solution. In conjunction with bedside barcode scanning, Clinical ConneXion has helped enable FMOLHS to virtually eliminate manual entry of commonly used supplies into the EHR by clinicians (from 50% to .05%) and significantly improve charge capture (from 40% to 95%) for improved data accuracy, greater process efficiency and increased revenue.

“We truly trust the data coming through Clinical ConneXion and that’s not something we could say before,” said Bill Mosser, vice president, Materials Management, FMOLHS. “Having good, quality data has enabled the supply chain organization to gain the trust of our clinical teams, because they value the data we are providing. That confidence means we can fulfill one of the main goals of this solution implementation—to make the product data capture process easier and quicker for clinicians. We’ve achieved that, and our clinicians are now able to find and select items with confidence and speed so they can spend more time at the bedside with patients.”

GHX utilized multiple sources of FMOLHS item data and created a repository of the data that FMOLHS requires in its EHR to make item information available and documentable for the clinical team. This includes charge information and attributes that the revenue cycle team needs for patient billing. The resulting item file that passes from Clinical ConneXion into FMOLHS’ EHR system contains 365,000 items, providing clinicians with complete and highly accurate supply data they need at the point of care.

“Clinical ConneXion allows organizations to focus on supply chain data while GHX provides the heavy lifting on clinical attributes needed for revenue integrity and downstream systems, such as the electronic health record,” said Tina Murphy, senior vice president, Global Product and Corporate Development. “Accurate, enriched item data is fed directly to the EHR by leveraging the item master and other data sources. This is the first opportunity for providers to connect two of its most important business processes and confidently answer the total cost of procedure.”

GHX Clinical ConneXion’s key capabilities include:

Availability
Clinical ConneXion is currently available to healthcare providers with Epic EHR systems. Additional EHR system integrations are planned for future release.

About GHX
Global Healthcare Exchange, LLC (GHX) is a healthcare business and data automation company, empowering healthcare organizations to enable better patient care and maximize industry savings using its world-class cloud-based supply chain technology platform. GHX brings together healthcare providers, manufacturers and distributors in North America, and Europe, who rely on proven healthcare-focused technology and comprehensive data to automate business processes and make more informed, timely and fact-based decisions. Solutions span procurement and accounts payable automation, contract and inventory management, vendor credentialing and management, business intelligence, payment management and other supply chain-related tools and services. For more information, visit www.ghx.com and The Healthcare Hub.