With Sunrise Date Approaching, Healthcare Providers Leverage GHX Services for Global Location Numbers in Supply Chain Transactions

LOUISVILLE, Colo., July 27 /PRNewswire/ -- Responding to requests from hospitals and other healthcare providers, GHX is now offering services to help them use GS1's Global Location Numbers (GLNs) in supply chain transactions with trading partners through the GHX exchange in time to comply with the Dec. 31, 2010, sunrise date set by major group purchasing organizations (GPOs) and a number of healthcare systems. Suppliers are being called on to use GLNs, as opposed to proprietary account numbers, in business agreements and transactions by the sunrise date. In order for suppliers to meet this request, healthcare providers must first assign GLNs to locations that are currently identified with supplier-provided account numbers.

Since its founding 10 years ago, GHX has helped facilitate the expansion of industry standards to enable greater visibility and collaboration in the healthcare supply chain and, in turn, build trust among stakeholders, improve efficiencies and lead to better quality patient care and improved financial performance.

The new GLN trading services for providers incorporate best practices developed from the results of numerous pilots conducted by GHX and participating hospitals and suppliers. The GLN enablement pilots were conducted to test the ability and steps required to support the use of standards in transactions.

GLNs are globally unique identification numbers for legal entities, functional entities and physical locations. Increasingly, the healthcare industry is recognizing that use of the 13-digit numbers has the potential to improve accuracy and efficiencies in the healthcare supply chain, especially as it relates to determining contract eligibility.  

Healthcare providers can choose from among the following services from GHX to help accelerate their use of GLNs and compliance with the pending sunrise dates for implementation:

• Registration of GLNs in the GHX exchange and communication of necessary information to trading partners, helping ensure they can receive transactions with GLNs
• Reconciliation of account numbers to GLNs with trading partners for shipping and billing consistency
• Trading Services that provide necessary cross-referencing, enabling transactions between trading partner pairs that have disparate technologies and/or protocols that otherwise restrict the use of GLNs

"Because GHX handles transactions for such a large percentage of the market, we believe we are best positioned to help facilitate the desire of both buyers and sellers to broadly and quickly implement industry standards, as opposed to having to approach the process with each of their individual trading partners on their own," said Ed McCauley, vice president, E-Sourcing and Business Intelligence, GHX. "As a result of the pilots, we recognize the complexity and challenges that healthcare organizations face migrating to GLNs and have learned how to make the process as efficient as possible."

GHX has published a new education paper to help providers successfully transact with GLNs on the GHX exchange and provide clarification regarding what GHX will handle for providers that choose to take advantage of the new service offering. It's available on the GHX website at: http://www.ghx.com/DesktopModules/Bring2mind/DMX/Download.aspx?TabId=716&DMXModule=2214&Command=Core_Download&EntryId=976. For information about the service offering, e-mail [email protected].

Recently, GHX also announced a new service for suppliers that appends provider GLNs to a manufacturer's customer master data, enabling manufacturers to propagate this standard for organization identification throughout their internal systems. In this way, as providers begin to enumerate with GLNs, suppliers can be better prepared to comply with the sunrise dates.

About GHX

As the business hub for healthcare, Global Healthcare Exchange, LLC (GHX) enables healthcare providers and suppliers in North America and Europe to reduce costs and improve margins by automating processes, reducing operating expenses and increasing knowledge-based decision making.  Products and services include trading partner connectivity, order and contract management and validation, data synchronization, sales force automation and business intelligence. Equity owners of GHX are 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