Recognizing that master data management is critical to driving out costs and waste in the healthcare supply chain, Prime Healthcare Services, a hospital management company that operates 25 acute care hospitals in California, Kansas, Nevada, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island and Texas, has chosen to implement the GHX NuViaSM Content Management Solution. Through the NuVia solution, GHX will cleanse, normalize and enrich Prime Healthcare Services’item master data, consolidating it into a single, enterprise-wide materials management information system (MMIS) and helping maintain its integrity moving forward.
Prime Healthcare Services has grown considerably in recent years through the acquisition of new hospitals, but in the process has also acquired multiple item masters containing outdated, erroneous and disparate product and pricing data. Manually maintaining 24 separate item masters is nearly impossible with the rate of data churn in the healthcare industry. It’s estimated that, each year, 10 million changes are made to medical-surgical products on the market in the U.S. and 360,000 changes are made to group purchasing organization (GPO) contract data. Inaccurate data drives up both soft and hard dollar costs, from the labor required to correct transactional errors to the revenue lost from overpayments and missed reimbursements.
The NuVia Content Management Solution reduces manual item master maintenance by cleansing and enriching an organization’s item master data with product and pricing information derived directly from back-end integration to medical-surgical manufacturers and GPOs. The NuVia solution serves as a cloud-based virtual item master, continually monitoring an organization’s item master for changes and updates, and then allowing the user to approve corrections to product data inaccuracies, removing duplicates and infilling missing information, such as manufacturer item numbers and units of measure (UOM), to help reduce transaction errors.
For Prime Healthcare Services, this highly automated approach will enable the organization to focus on its quality services and strategic growth rather than manual data entry and management.
“When evaluating solutions for our master data management strategy, we determined that automation and real-time integration with the highest volume of our suppliers’and GPO’s product and pricing information were absolutely essential,”said Lisa Ottem, corporate director, Supply Chain Management, Prime Healthcare Services. “GHX was the only solution provider that offered these capabilities, enabling us to gain control over our item master data today and easily scale up to accommodate future growth.”
The NuVia solution synchronizes Prime Healthcare Services’item master data with multiple industry sources, including GHX AllSource® Prime, the only supplier-verified data synchronization platform in the healthcare industry containing information on more than two million medical-surgical items. The NuVia solution then presents Prime Healthcare Services with ongoing recommendations for item updates, which staff must preview and approve before making it available to the organization’s MMIS.
According to Sreekant Gotti, vice president of Information Technology for Prime Healthcare Services, this marriage of product data automation with the organization’s enterprise resource planning (ERP) system, referred to as Power-Sourcing, is one of the main reasons it switched from a third party outsourcer for its data cleansing and management to the NuVia solution.
“One of the features that set NuVia apart from competing solutions was that it enables us to maintain internal control over our item master data, which we see as a strategic asset to our organization,”said Gotti. “Each time we acquire a new hospital, NuVia will compare the facilities data with our IDN level item master. Within minutes, we have recommendations for data synchronization. We have access to unmatched healthcare industry resources and expertise from GHX, but we also have the final word on what changes we make to our data.”
Gotti further states, “GHX has a fine reputation in the healthcare industry as a service organization with experience in helping healthcare organizations create and implement master data management strategies. This was very appealing to us, and we considered it a critical component to solidifying our partnership.”
“Healthcare reform is forcing provider organizations to take a closer look at their product and pricing data and many are now seeing how inaccuracies significantly drive up costs and undermine revenues,”said Derek Smith, chief commercial officer, GHX. “In addition, many provider organizations are also considering reshaping their organizational structures and offerings through mergers, acquisitions and divestures. As a result, interest in our NuVia solution has skyrocketed in the past year with a growing number of providers leveraging it as the cornerstone of their evolving master data management strategies. In M&A situations, organizations can get to new states of efficiency more quickly when they’re able to bring all their activities together through a single, accurate item master. It is a testament to the unparalleled strength of our technology solutions, industry connections and supply chain expertise.”
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.
About Prime Healthcare Services
Ontario, CA-based Prime Healthcare Services (www.primehealthcare.com), with a motto of “Saving Hospitals, Saving Jobs and Saving Lives,”is one of the largest hospital companies in the nation.
Prime Healthcare was recognized as one of the “15 Top Health Systems”in the nation in 2013, based on quality of healthcare and patient satisfaction. It is the third time in five years it has been recognized. In 2013, eight Prime Healthcare hospitals were ranked among the “100 Top Hospitals”in the nation by Truven Health Analytics (formerly Thomson Reuters). Prime Healthcare hospitals have earned the award 21 times. In addition, 11 Prime Healthcare hospitals earned national recognition as “Top Performer on Key Quality Measures”in 2013 from The Joint Commission, the leading Medicare accreditation organization in the country.
Through their subsidiaries, Prime Healthcare Services and the non-profit Prime Healthcare Foundation have more than 30,000 employees and own and operate 25 hospitals: Alvarado Hospital Medical Center, Centinela Hospital Medical Center, Chino Valley Medical Center, Desert Valley Hospital, Encino Hospital Medical Center, Garden Grove Hospital Medical Center, Huntington Beach Hospital, La Palma Intercommunity Hospital, Montclair Hospital Medical Center, Paradise Valley Hospital, San Dimas Community Hospital, Shasta Regional Medical Center, Sherman Oaks Hospital and West Anaheim Medical Center – in California;Providence Medical Center and Saint John Hospital – in Kansas;Saint Mary’s Regional Medical Center – in Nevada;Lower Bucks Hospital and Roxborough Memorial Hospital – in Pennsylvania;Landmark Medical Center and Rehabilitation Hospital of Rhode Island – in Rhode Island;Dallas Medical Center, Harlingen Medical Center, Knapp Medical Center and Pampa Regional Medical Center – in Texas