Mobile Marketplace: Moving beyond the Four Walls of Healthcare Supply Chain

• Lisa Mendez, Product Management Director

Ordering supplies is an in-person task that has long been conducted within the confines of the hospital. But as the healthcare industry copes with unprecedent rates of burnout and staff resignation, it’s become increasingly important to provide healthcare worker with options that alleviate unnecessary burden whether or not they’re in a typical hospital setting.

Due to the pandemic and other factors, many healthcare workers who previously spent most of their time in a routine setting have become less tethered to their locations and desktop computers. Staffing shortages have led to nurses being shared between hospitals, resulting in them often being on the go. But workplace responsibilities – such as ordering items– have remained frozen in place. Or have they?

Table of contents

1. Expand beyond the four walls of supply chain
2. Ease of use straight for the mobile app
3. Reduce the administrative burden on staff
4. Enforce compliance with preferred item results
5. Integrated bill-only workflows with Mobile Edition

Expanding the four walls of healthcare supply chain

In the digitally transforming world, clinical staff need flexibility to extend procurement past the four walls of the supply chain. GHX Marketplace Mobile Edition extends GHX Marketplace ordering functionality to employees who are on the move. Mobile Edition is an efficient, mobile requisitioning tool that exposes approved supplies and services to your requester community via the quick scan of a barcode or a traditional search.

As a user-friendly, intuitive requisitioning platform that directs a user’s search and purchasing activity to the health system’s preferred sources at the right, contracted price, GHX Marketplace controls the entire health system spend, provides maximum data transparency into purchasing behavior across multiple locations, and increases compliance and utilization. GHX Marketplace is a vital tool used by many leading health systems, so ensuring its flexibility and adaptability in the ever-changing supply chain world is essential.

Whether working in a patient’s home or from different hospital locations, Mobile Edition allows staff to continue shopping on behalf of their homebase or be instantly onboarded and enabled to start ordering items for any other locations where they’re also working. This is a theme that will continue to trend as the demand for home health access evolves.

Easy to use with built-in scan and capture

If you’ve ever engaged in mobile shopping – for groceries, for example – you already know how to use Mobile Edition. It is just as, if not more, user-friendly than traditional methods of reordering supplies. It’s as easy as scan, confirm and go.

While clinical staff previously might have manually entered items on a computer while ordering, Mobile Edition uses the built-in scan and capture functionality on your phone. Bar codes on product or case ID sheets can be scanned to quickly display item attributes, serial numbers, GTIN, HCPCS, images and more on Mobile Edition to better enrich the ordering experience. This also provides a touchless, individualized process for all staff.

Save time and reduce the administrative burden

Many healthcare workers would tell you they spend an inordinate amount of time dealing with supply chain-related issues. In fact, a Becker’s Hospital Review article noted that many clinicians spend up to 20% of their time on these tasks rather than caring for patients. Mobile Edition can help cut down on time spent on administrative tasks.

Clinicians are often tasked with monitoring their own stock, and ensuring they have an ideal PAR level of supplies, a burden that only increased with supply chain shortages in the wake of the pandemic. Typically, a clinician would have to make time to complete manual searches on a computer and order items.

Imagine clinical staff having the ability to scan items while in a patient’s home or on the hospital floor while performing clinical tasks and building multiple saved carts throughout the day to be left with a simple finalized checkout at the end of a shift. Now they can.

The benefit of Mobile Edition is that it enables staff to scan items whenever they need to and wherever they are, removing time, additional steps and potential errors from the process.

Enforce compliance with preferred item results

Even though a clinical staff member might be on the move, Mobile Edition ensures they are not risking non-compliance. Mobile Edition enforces both product and contract compliance by providing users access to approved, preferred, contracted items. Predetermined tags or weights, for example, can push a specific stocked or functional equivalent item up in the results.

For nurses traveling from hospital to hospital, a mobile option could be especially helpful, as preferred items are not necessarily the same at every hospital. A nurse on the go can build a unique cart for each unique location based on the items needed.

Integrated bill-only workflows with Mobile Edition

GHX’s bill-only workflow integrates with Mobile Edition to shift the burden of order entry from clinical staff to the suppliers. This workflow provides the tools needed to automate, audit and approve bill-only items from the point of service through the procurement lifecycle.

It provides a convenient entry point for both health system clinical users and suppliers to capture case attributes for downstream tracking and reporting. Although not a part of the health system, suppliers can be enabled to access their unique content to build a cart with bill-only items, to later be reviewed and approved by health system staff.

💡Read more: find out how to automate consignment bill-only implant orders

A smooth transition for clinical staff

Mobile Edition helps ensure that the transition to new ordering processes goes smoothly or streamlines existing methods. It’s an easy-to-use, time-saving requisitioning tool that enables clinical staff on the move to order necessary supplies for all situations, all the while ensuring that orders are contractually compliant.

Adapting to changes in the workplace can be challenging, especially when figuring out how to ensure that tasks that haven’t changed are completed as new trends transform the work experience. But technology partners like GHX can help make simple, everyday supply chain tasks easier through new and traditional methods.

Request a demo of GHX Marketplace and learn more about Mobile Edition.

Lisa Mendez

Product Management Director