Best of the Healthcare Supply Chain Honored with GHXcellence Awards

LOUISVILLE, Colo., May 8, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- GHX honored 10 healthcare provider and supplier organizations with 11 GHXcellence Awards for driving out costs, reducing waste, and improving business performance through supply chain automation and trading partner collaboration. The winners were announced at the 12th annual GHX Healthcare Supply Chain Summit – the largest event to bring together both the buy and sell sides of the healthcare supply chain.

The awards were granted to organizations that best met specific criteria during 2011, including:

• Increased use of e-commerce solutions throughout the healthcare supply chain
• The number of trading partners with whom they conducted e-commerce
• The percentage of orders transacted electronically
• The percentage of invoices transacted electronically
• Reduction in order and invoice discrepancies and errors

This year's GHXcellence Award recipients are:

• Best 50 IDN/Facility*: St. Joseph's Hospital Health Center, Syracuse, N.Y.
• Most Improved Healthcare Provider: Northeast Georgia Health System, Gainesville, Ga.
• U.S. Healthcare Provider of the Year (Large Organization): University of California San Francisco (UCSF) Medical Center, Oakland, Calif.
• U.S. Healthcare Provider of the Year (Small-to-Mid-Sized Organization): UW Medicine/Valley Medical Center, Renton, Wash.
• Canadian Healthcare Provider of the Year: Champlain Health Supply Services, Ottawa, Ontario
• Canadian Healthcare Supplier of the Year: Hospira Canada, Montreal, Quebec
• U.S. Healthcare Supplier of the Year (Large Organization): C.R. Bard, Inc., Murray Hill, N.J.
• U.S. Healthcare Supplier of the Year (Mid-Sized Organization): Terumo, Inc., Somerset, N.J.
• U.S. Healthcare Supplier of the Year (Small Organization): Key Surgical, Inc., Eden Prairie, Minn.

* Integrated delivery networks with the lowest purchase order exception rates

New this year, GHX honored a provider and supplier organization with its GHXcellence Industry Impact Awards, recognizing those healthcare organizations having the greatest impact on the healthcare supply chain by enabling true cost reductions, increasing the efficiency of shared processes and supporting growth in this challenging economy. GHX called upon its member community to submit nominations for these awards and then invited the entire healthcare industry to vote for the winners.

The 2011 GHXcellence Industry Impact Award winners are:

• Most Impactful Provider: University of California San Francisco (UCSF) Medical Center, Oakland, Calif. Recognizing that the supply chain plays a critical role in delivering high-quality, cost-effective patient care, UCSF Medical Center engaged in a large-scale supply chain automation project with GHX, McKesson (materials management information system vendor) and its trading partners. The organization connected electronically with 320 suppliers, automated 95 percent of its non-consignment medical-surgical spend and drove down purchase order and invoice errors by leveraging the GHX electronic trading exchange and GHX MetaTrade, which converts electronic orders into fax or e-mail format for suppliers not connected to the GHX Exchange.
• Most Impactful Supplier: Johnson & Johnson Health Care Systems Inc., Murray Hill, N.J. Johnson & Johnson Health Care Systems Inc. (JJHCS) served as a pilot site for the development of the GHX eInvoicing service, which enables suppliers to send electronic invoices to their customers, removing manual processes currently used by provider organizations without electronic data interchange (EDI) capabilities. By collaborating with GHX on an industry-wide solution rather than a proprietary platform, JJHCS is helping to drive greater efficiency and cost savings throughout the larger healthcare community. For JJHCS, this solution helped improve customer satisfaction while improving processing efficiencies.

"In today's healthcare marketplace, providers and suppliers are facing tremendous pressure to improve their business performance. Industry experts have predicted only those willing to defy the status quo and create meaningful change will survive," said Bruce Johnson, president and CEO, GHX. "This year's GHXcellence Awards recognize those organizations taking it upon themselves to address the challenges facing our industry, working to ensure not only their own survival, but also the long-term viability of the industry as a whole."

About GHX
Global Healthcare Exchange, LLC (GHX), a healthcare technology and services company, helps reduce the cost of doing business in healthcare by enabling better supply chain management. GHX makes it easier for hospitals, other healthcare providers and the suppliers that do business with them to drive cost and inefficiency out of their processes. Working with GHX, the healthcare organizations that make up the GHX Global Network are on track to save $5 billion by 2014—savings that can be invested in such things as hiring more nurses, providing care to uninsured children or developing new medical products. GHX is owned by organizations on both the buy and sell side of the healthcare supply chain, including some of the largest companies in the world. Find GHX on the Web, on Twitter @GHX_LLC and on Facebook @GHX.

SOURCE GHX