DALLAS, April 19, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- GHX honored 10 healthcare provider and supplier organizations with GHXcellence Awards for leveraging the power of their supply chains to cut costs, reduce waste and improve business performance. The winners were announced today at the 11th annual GHX Healthcare Supply Chain Summit, being held this week in Dallas.

The theme of this year's awards, "Innovative People. Intelligent Healthcare," reflects the accomplishments of organizations that have taken advantage of opportunities in the supply chain to decrease costs while improving patient care. The awards are granted to organizations that did the best job of automating supply chain processes and creating efficiencies according to specific criteria during 2010, 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*: Tufts Medical Center, Boston, Mass.
• Most Improved Healthcare Provider: St. Luke's Health System, Boise, Idaho
• U.S. Healthcare Provider of the Year (Mid-to-Large Facility): Tufts Medical Center, Boston, Mass.
• U.S. Healthcare Provider of the Year (Small-Mid Facility): Rockingham Memorial Hospital, Harrisonburg, Va.
• Canadian Healthcare Provider of the Year: Champlain Health Supply Services, Ottawa Ontario
• Canadian Healthcare Supplier of the Year: Baxter Canada, Mississauga, Ontario
• U.S. Healthcare Supplier of the Year: Stryker Corporation, Kalamazoo, Mich.
• Healthcare Distributor of the Year: Cardinal Health, Inc., Dublin, Ohio

* Integrated delivery networks with the lowest purchase order exception rates

The criteria for many GHXcellence Awards are based on quantifiable performance, with organizations being judged on specific metrics. This year, for the first time, GHX customers also were able to submit nominations for the Most Innovative Provider and Supplier awards, which focus on more subjective criteria, allowing nominees to express ways in which they've achieved supply chain excellence through innovations using GHX services and substantially improved business processes and technology. Those winners include:

• Most Innovative Provider for Business Process Change: The New York City Health and Hospitals Corporation (HHC), New York, N.Y. Recognizing that its supply chain presented a key opportunity for savings to help close its budget gap, HHC teamed with GHX on a complete supply chain transformation to take significant costs out of its operations. Through the use of GHX e-commerce solutions, HHC automated its supply chain to streamline processes, improve data accuracy, increase visibility into its purchases and garner critical information that it can use to make more strategic purchasing decisions.
• Most Innovative Supplier for Business Process Change: Cardinal Health, Inc., Dublin, Ohio. Endeavoring to improve the accuracy and efficiency of its procure-to-pay process, Cardinal Health was the first distributor to leverage the GHX Collaboration Portal to synchronize contract pricing in real-time with providers, suppliers and group purchasing organizations. In doing so, Cardinal Health is helping to drive increased first-time pricing accuracy and reduced turnaround times – in turn, reducing waste across the industry.
• Most Innovative Provider for Technology: Memorial Hermann Healthcare System, Houston, Texas. Realizing that its paper-based contract management operation was inefficient, costly and in need of an overhaul, Memorial Hermann looked to GHX, its trusted e-commerce partner, for a solution. Using CCXpert from GHX, Memorial Hermann has automated its contract management process to help ensure it is paying the correct price for items on contract, significantly improving efficiency and enabling the organization to identify, on average, $25,000 per month in potential contract overpayments.
• Most Innovative Supplier for Technology: Medtronic, Inc., Minneapolis, Minn. Understanding that the true value of a technology is in its effective use, Medtronic was a catalyst in driving the evolution of GHX Mobile Solutions from a Windows-based platform to a device and operating agnostic, Web-hosted Infrastructure as a Service. Through this work, Medtronic has generated greater satisfaction and usage of GHX Mobile Solutions within its sales operations and helped to develop an advanced solution for the broader supplier community. At the same time, Medtronic has significantly increased its e-commerce transactional volumes through the GHX exchange, doubling its PO volumes over the past eight quarters, tripling its invoice volumes over the past eight quarters and increasing PO, line and gross transactional volume tenfold in the last five years.

"We've reached a critical stage in healthcare evolution where the old ways of doing business no longer apply. To survive and thrive in today's environment, healthcare providers and suppliers must transform their business operations," said GHX CEO Bruce Johnson. "This year's GHXcellence Award winners recognize the pivotal role that the supply chain plays in healthcare reform and are leveraging this strategic asset to deliver high-quality patient care in a fiscally responsible manner."

About GHX

Global Healthcare Exchange, LLC (GHX) makes healthcare more efficient by delivering software and services that enable both healthcare providers and suppliers to increase efficiency, lower costs and deliver better patient care. With the largest footprint in healthcare supply chain management, GHX connects more than 80 percent of licensed hospital beds at U.S. hospitals, as well as providers in Canada and Europe, with the suppliers from which they purchase the majority of their medical-surgical supplies. GHX is transforming today's linear healthcare supply chain into the industry's only Healthcare Supply Cloud(SM), providing 360-degree visibility into areas affecting both clinical and financial performance. Working with GHX, organizations can improve business processes, automate supply chain systems and collaborate to solve the tough challenges facing healthcare today. GHX is owned by members of the healthcare industry, including Abbott Exchange, Inc.; AmerisourceBergen Corp.; Baxter Healthcare Corp.; B. Braun Medical Inc.; BD; Boston Scientific Corp.; Cardinal Health, Inc.; Covidien; C.R. Bard, Inc.; Thermo Fisher Scientific Inc.; GE Healthcare; HCA; Johnson & Johnson Health Care Systems Inc.; McKesson Corp.; Medtronic USA, Inc.; Owens & Minor; Premier, Inc.; Siemens; University HealthSystem Consortium; and VHA Inc.  For more information, visit www.ghx.com.

SOURCE GHX