Global Healthcare Exchange, LLC (GHX) announced that it is working with healthcare providers across North America to help them significantly expand automation of supplier relationships for order automation. Historically, leading hospitals have been challenged to expand their automated supply chain relationships beyond suppliers that support electronic integration. Healthcare organizations can now activate all their suppliers with a new service from GHX. The Managed Service for Purchase Order Acknowledgement (POA), supports fully electronic supply chain interactions with suppliers of all capabilities. With this new service, GHX providers have been able to on-board as many as 1,000 suppliers, a number previously unheard of in healthcare.
The service, launched earlier this year, addresses a time-consuming order management challenge—securing order acknowledgements from suppliers without a fully automated electronic connection. Through a single integrated connection, POA Managed Service helps providers work electronically with its trading partners regardless of how they receive orders, reducing costs and errors, while gaining enhanced visibility into the order process.
“The ability to automate such a large percentage of a hospital’s spend can allow it to standardize procurement processes and provide greater visibility to order exceptions,” said Tina Murphy, senior vice president, Global Product and Corporate Development, GHX. “The new service is designed to help provider customers increase their organizational efficiency and improve compliance to contracts.”
Managed Service POA is a key component of total order management for GHX customers, providing an electronic view within the GHX My Exchange dashboard of all POAs received regardless of supplier response method - email, fax or phone. This helps providers gain greater visibility around order status and maximize efficiency in order management. Importantly, providers benefit by getting electronic verification of purchase orders from suppliers that do not transact orders electronically.
“The healthcare industry is in a tough spot with rising costs and shrinking reimbursements,” added Murphy. “GHX is looking at the business processes within order management to identify ways that we can help the provider community increase efficiency and automation, and thereby reduce cost and increase staff time for high value activities. Providers report that they spend an estimated 10–15 percent of their time on order acknowledgements. So, the opportunity to deliver measurable value to healthcare is significant.”
GHX Managed Service POA is a comprehensive program that can capture all POAs electronically. The new service includes:
Availability
GHX Managed Service POA is available now in the United States and Canada.
About GHX
Global Healthcare Exchange, LLC (GHX) drives costs out of healthcare with cloud-based supply chain management technology and services 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, payment management and other supply chain-related tools and services. For more information, visit www.ghx.com and The Healthcare Hub.