Some of the country's most prominent healthcare systems, including the Geisinger Health System, Intermountain Healthcare, Kaiser Permanente, the Mayo Clinic and the Sisters of Mercy Health System, have joined together to adopt GS1 standards for their supply chains.
GS1 is a not-for-profit association focused on implementing standards to improve the efficiency of supply chains. The GS1 standards system is the most widely used global supply chain standards system.
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“Together, our healthcare systems are creating a group scorecard to track our suppliers’ adoption of GS1 standards and we will use this tool in our product decision making process,” said Curtis Dudley, vice president of integrated business solutions for ROi, the supply chain division of the Sisters of Mercy Health System. “In today’s environment, providers recognize the need to collaborate and share information. Our collaboration is important to help move our industry forward.”
In 2010, the five healthcare systems collaborated to share best practices and accelerate the implementation of GS1 standards, including global location numbers (GLNs), the 13-digit number used to identify any legal entity/trading partner, and global trade item numbers (GTINs), the GS1 system identification number that uniquely identifies trade items at all levels of packaging.
“We believe the adoption of these standards is critical to helping our industry drive reform," said Laurel Junk, vice president of supply chain for Kaiser Permanente.
The collaboration, called the Healthcare Transformation Group, evolved from each member’s involvement in healthcare’s movement toward standards adoption.
“For a healthcare provider system, having unique product identifiers is important, as GTINs help ensure the right product is used on a patient while allowing us to track the cost of supplies per patient,” said Cynthia Shumway, manager of systems and information for Intermountain Healthcare. “There is both a clinical benefit and an operational benefit through the adoption of standards.”
The use of standardized product identification such as GTINs ensures the accuracy of product information at every level of packaging throughout the healthcare supply chain, from manufacturer to point-of-care. Reliable product data enables more effective product recalls, efficient traceability and improved business processes. A GTIN, when used correctly, helps a company identify products as they move through the supply chain to the end user.
“We want to work with manufacturers who are adopting GTINs,” said Mark Olson, a supply chain analyst for Intermountain Healthcare. “The standards we are advocating ... not only help improve patient safety, but they help our industry better manage supply chains through accurate data and the ability to efficiently share data internally and externally.”
In addition to studying manufacturer adoption of GS1 standards, the healthcare systems are also reviewing IT suppliers – including Lawson, Epic, Omnicell and PeopleSoft – for their capabilities to support those standards. The HTG plans to share its conclusions with others in the industry through GS1 work groups.
“As an industry, it is time for us all to move forward together in adopting a common language the same way that most evolved industries have adopted,” said Karen Wolfe, finance coordinator for supply chain management at the Mayo Clinic. “This is an important step for our healthcare systems as we join together to assess the suppliers we work with and study their commitment to partnering with us through the use of GS1 standards.”
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“This is an exciting time in healthcare, as there is tremendous momentum behind standards implementation for all the right reasons – to improve efficiencies, reduce costs and enhance patient safety,” said Ed Miles, vice president of GS1 Healthcare US. “We believe this collaboration will be a powerful force in our efforts to improve the healthcare supply chain.”