GHX 2016 Healthcare Supply Chain Summit Opens with Focus on Innovation and Collaboration to Raise the Bar in Healthcare

Global Healthcare Exchange, LLC (GHX) kicked off its 16^th annual Healthcare Supply Chain Summit this morning at the JW Marriott in Austin, Texas. The intensive three-day conference focuses on the critical value of collaboration across provider and supplier organizations, and technology innovation as a means to achieve cost savings and strengthen business processes leading to improved quality of patient care.

Bruce Johnson, president and CEO and Steve Cochran, chief technology officer, of GHX open the Monday General Session at 3:00 PM CDT with a presentation on how GHX continues to address the most challenging issues facing the global community of healthcare providers and suppliers while delivering a new, advanced cloud-based trading partner exchange.

“The healthcare industry is under extreme pressure, from reimbursement reform, new regulations, meaningful use requirements, and increased mergers and acquisitions, to name a few. We have invested over several years to develop and launch our cloud-based CoreX platform that sets new best-in-class-standards in healthcare for security, speed, visibility, and reliability. This is critical to our provider and supplier customers, which must reach even higher levels of automation and efficiency to compete in this new healthcare environment,” said Johnson. 

Additional Summit speakers include:

• James Carville and Mary Matalin offer their candid and provocative analysis of the 2016 race for the White House, and a behind-the-scenes look at healthcare legislation and DC politics.
• Chris Tarbell, Former FBI Cyber Security Special Agent and current Director, Berkeley Research Group shares his experiences taking down notorious cyber criminals and outlines the nation’s growing cyber threats and the challenges healthcare organizations have in protecting themselves.
• Major Gen. Vincent “Vinny” Boles, USA (Ret) will discuss how America's Army has historically developed leaders and teams to function at their highest performance levels under the most stressful of conditions – illustrating how healthcare professionals can apply some of those strategies as they lead their teams.
• Laurel Junk, Chief Supply Chain and Procurement Officer, Kaiser Permanente and Barry Blake, Vice President of Research, SCM World present on what the impact of a changing patient population will have on providers and suppliers and how to navigate the complexity of patient-centered supply chain.
• Robert Cerfolio, Professor of Surgery and Chief of the Section of Thoracic Surgery, and Mary Beth Briscoe, CFO, The University of Alabama Medical Center share on the challenges healthcare faces moving to a value-based payment environment, how to actively engage physicians in the process, and the integral role supply chain can play in the making of a successful transition.

On Tuesday, May 24, the GHXcellence Awards Lunch Banquet will recognize supply chain leaders who are driving savings and efficiency for their organizations, their trading partners and the healthcare industry through automation, innovation and best practices. This year, GHX is also recognizing the inaugural class of the new Millennium Club for provider and supplier organizations that generate over one million automated transactions annually through the GHX Exchange to create efficiencies, accuracy and visibility for their own organizations and their trading partners.

The Healthcare Supply Chain Summit is a unique event in healthcare, offering a wealth of information, expertise, networking opportunities and inspiration for all parties in the healthcare supply chain—providers, suppliers, distributors and GPOs—and across all levels of the organization, from strategic to tactical. The Summit fosters a collaborative environment, encouraging an open dialog to look critically at ways to leverage technology and adopt modern processes and best practices to help the industry achieve cost savings, strengthen organizations and improve patient safety. 

About GHX

Global Healthcare Exchange, LLC (GHX) drives costs out of healthcare with cloud-based supply chain management technology and services in order to help enable better patient care and savings by maximizing automation, efficiency, and accuracy of business processes. GHX offers healthcare providers and suppliers an open and neutral electronic trading exchange that delivers procurement and accounts payable automation, contract and inventory management, vendor credentialing and management, business intelligence, and other supply chain-related tools and services. For more information, visit www.ghx.com and The Healthcare Hub.