Future of Healthcare Supply Chains: An In-Depth Analysis

• Kara L. Nadeau, Healthcare Industry Contributor

As healthcare systems seek to build resilience, industry leaders are looking to technology as the primary source of innovation. This in-depth analysis of current challenges and future trends explores the role of AI, value-based care, DEI and sustainability in the future of healthcare supply chains. 

GHX named a Healthcare Industry Notable Vendor in 2022 Gartner® Vertical Industry Context

We’re excited to share that GHX was named a Notable Vendor in the 2022 Gartner® Vertical Industry Context: ‘Magic Quadrant™ for Multienterprise Supply Chain Business Networks’. We believe this is meaningful in showing how we help our customers achieve strategic digital transformations and unlock value through collaboration by engaging internally and with trading partners. The expansion of digitization industry-wide helps to modernize and build resiliency in the healthcare supply chain.

How Data Supports Consignment Implant Order Automation

“Not to beat a dead horse but I’m going to say it again. It starts with your data. You’ve got to clean your house up—make sure everything is clean, contracts aligned, pricing loaded—and then you can build from there. If that's not right, it gets messy, a lot of back and forth, and nobody is going to be satisfied.” -Franco Sagliocca, Corporate Director, Supply Chain, Mount Sinai Health System.

 After years of trying, health systems are successfully automating implant orders thanks to technology advancements, greater provider/supplier collaboration and the desire to find new ways to drive costs and waste out of the healthcare supply chain.

How Will Suppliers Respond to Increasingly Complex Healthcare Supply Chains?

There is more complexity coming to healthcare supply chain. This will require support for value-based care and preparing for the continued rise in healthcare delivery outside of a traditional hospital setting. Precision, accuracy and timing for supply delivery will continue to grow in importance. Establishing a foundation that will support your customers’ needs today and for quickly emerging trends is the critical third step in making it easier for healthcare providers to conduct business with you.

Leveraging Data for Analytics and Insights: Leading Healthcare Suppliers Know the Shared Value

Leading healthcare suppliers are embracing the needs of their healthcare provider customers for more automation from end to end in supply chain. A well-planned digital transformation strategy helps to contain costs, support supply chain resiliency, and distinguish leading suppliers from the rest of the pack.

From the first step of digitization comes an abundance of data. But for all stakeholders to reap the value from the output, we need a way to understand and put the data to use in a way that drives better patient outcomes. Predictive analytics can help suppliers and customers support critical business decisions impacting patient care.

Embracing a Digital Transformation Strategy: Leading Healthcare Suppliers Make Doing Business Easier

Most would agree that being easy to do business with is a way to set your business apart and deepen customer relationships. It is certainly so for suppliers in the competitive healthcare industry. Leading suppliers are looking at the complete customer experience and acting on the opportunity to support healthcare providers’ needs by embracing a digital transformation strategy.

Modernizing the supply chain to create a future where affordable, quality healthcare is possible

• Tina Vatanka Murphy, President & CEO

As health systems continue the shift toward value-based care and seek to overcome the challenges wrought by COVID-19, they face significant pressures due to workforce shortages, reimbursement challenges, mounting supply costs and persistent sourcing difficulties. In their return to this post-pandemic reality, leaders are pursuing opportunities to transform their businesses to be more operationally efficient and cost-effective while maximizing revenue opportunities and improving patient care.

Trends for 2022 and Beyond for Medical Device Company-to-Hospital Supply Chains

• Denise Odenkirk, Vice President, Supplier Sales

Following nearly two years of disruption from a global pandemic, natural disasters, and even an unprecedented shipping canal blockage, trends that emerged out of necessity are now more likely the expected way of doing business.

In this post, Denise Odenkirk, Vice President of Supplier Sales for GHX lends her perspective on the driving forces behind the trends and the value to the industry.

*Republished in part with permission from BONEZONE, www.BONEZONEpub.com.

A Cloud ERP System + The Right Data = Organizational Resiliency

• Pete Nelson, General Manager, Global Alliances

As recent months have painfully demonstrated, healthcare systems and processes must be fortified to withstand shock and maintain business continuity in the face of unforeseen challenges. To be sure, cloud ERP systems provide greater resilience for healthcare organizations compared to disparate on-premises systems. But without the right data, that resilience can be limited.

Supporting the clinically integrated supply chain

• Hani Elias, Senior Vice President and General Manager, Lumere, a GHX company

To deliver greater value in healthcare, providers and suppliers must first be able to identify those factors that impact cost, quality and outcomes—as the adage goes, you can’t manage what you can’t measure. Historically, the clinical and operational sides of healthcare have worked in silos, making collaboration and data sharing a challenge. But as payments for care delivery are increasingly tied to quality and efficiency, the industry has begun the hard work of tearing down long-standing barriers.

GHX and Workday Align in the Cloud for Healthcare

• Pete Nelson, General Manager, Global Alliances

Over the past 30 years, hospitals have been adopting technologies to steadily increase process automation throughout their operations in an effort to enhance efficiency and reduce costs. It began in the 1980s with the initial use of mainframes and desktop computers for electronic patient registration, continued through the late 1990s with “Best of Breed” systems, such as materials management information systems (MMIS) for order processing and inventory management, and then transitioned in the early 2000s to present day with the adoption of on-premise (“on-prem”) enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems that automated both materials management and financial operations.

Going Beyond Supply Chain Basics: Pricing Alignment in Healthcare

• Susan LaFountain, Product Manager, Industry Adoption

Two decades ago, a few healthcare supply chain partners decided to automate basic transactions so that they could improve efficiency and accuracy and reduce costs – and the GHX Exchange was born. Today over 10 thousand supplier divisions and 19 thousand provider facilities use GHX standards to automate the four core supply chain documents: The purchase order (850), purchase order acknowledgment (855), advance ship notice (856) and invoice (810). These “basic” supply chain transactions encompass the processes around placing an order, delivering the products and billing for those products.

Standardizing and Automating Order Confirmations: The Long-Tail Effect

What role does the purchase order acknowledgment (POA) play in supporting better patient outcomes? This simple task, when accomplished, can be traced back to multiple advantages in the healthcare supply chain. This is especially true when the POA is part of a holistic, standardized approach to order management. The supply chain team gains greater visibility into order status and can better manage the process of delivering the correct products in a timely manner to support patient care.

Healthcare Supply Chain at the Intersection of Cost, Quality and Outcomes

In 2013, around the same time that value-based purchasing and alternate payment models hit the healthcare scene, the Association for Health Care Resource & Materials Management (AHRMM) launched its Cost, Quality and Outcomes (CQO) Movement, which frames the new role that supply chain professionals play in today’s value-based healthcare environment.