Healthcare M&A Presents Opportunities for Change

Since 2013, Mount Sinai Health System has grown rapidly through M&A activity. As a result, we’ve had multiple hospitals with their own supply chain and accounts payable (AP) departments each using disparate technologies, including different enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems and item masters. 

We’ve asked ourselves – Is it good to have all of this technology or not? And, if so, how do we make it work for us so we can better care for our patients?

Here are some of the steps we are taking to centralize processes, systems and data. 

• Collaboration: We are trying to work better together - sourcing, purchasing, the business technology team, materials management and supply chain. In order to source products on contract and at the right prices, we need to impact the entire procure-to-pay cycle and use technology to weed out discrepancies.

• Education: We have aligned purchasing and sourcing, and are working to educate staff on the impact of pricing errors and off-contract purchases. We’ve aligned teams and trained them to ask the right questions, such as when to flag an order and when to reach out to sourcing for assistance. Education is key because everyone in the procure-to-pay process has different skill sets.

• Data integrity: We are taking a contract-centric approach to data integrity because it begins with the contract – the data has to be clean there from the start. GHX is helping us review each of our contracts, identify errors and then work with individual vendors to correct the data. We hit each contract once, getting the data accurate and then moving onto the next one. Today our contract match rate is over 75 percent, higher than the GHX best in class average.

Moving forward, we are looking at issues on the invoicing side and trying to determine how we can work outside of the four walls of supply chain with AP so our invoices are cleaner. How do we make an impact from start to finish – from req to check? And beyond that, how do we improve supply chain processes outside of the acute care setting to support our healthcare organization’s population health strategy? 

In healthcare, you can’t stay stagnant. Everything is moving so fast and you have to look ahead. We are building a platform with flexibility that will allow us to grow and meet the future demands on our industry.

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GHX helps tackle the challenges associated with disparate systems, disconnected business processes and inaccurate, unreliable data. Learn more about our solutions in this case study where Onslow Memorial Hospital discovered major savings with the help of the GHX Consulting team, CCXpert and MetaTrade.