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INSIDE THE CURRENT ISSUE |
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Standard Practices |
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Hospitals report value in GLN adoption by MJ Wylie, director of global data standardization, GHX T he GLN sunrise date, by which group purchasing organizations (GPOs) and some healthcare systems have called on trading partners to be using the GS1 standard for organization and location identification is December 31, 2010. This month’s Q&A focuses on the GLN sunrise date, and on hospitals that have successfully begun the process to enumerate their organizations with GLNs and the value they have or expect to receive.Let’s begin with a question from a large regional hospital in the western United States: I’m an IT manager in a large regional hospital and am having trouble getting an answer to my question about exactly who (what regulatory agency) is requiring GLN and what are the penalties for non-compliance? Is this a legal requirement, or industry best practice? There is no regulatory requirement to use GLNs, and as such there are no government penalties for non-compliance. The GLN and GTIN sunrise dates, December 31, 2010 and 2012, respectively, are solely market driven. Many of the major GPOs and some large healthcare systems have said they will require healthcare trading partners to begin using the respective standards in business transactions by those dates. According to GS1 US, successful adoption and usage of the GLNs by the sunrise date means: • GLNs are assigned by location owners. • GLNs are used in appropriate business transactions and processes between trading partners. • GLN hierarchy is defined and maintained by location owners. • GLN Registry for Healthcare is used to facilitate correct location identification.Editor’s Note: While the FDA is not requiring the use of a GLN or any brand-specific standard there’s a high probability that the federal agency will require a Unique Device Identifier (UDI), in which a standard such as GLN will be incorporated. What have hospitals that have begun the move to GLNs found to be the benefits? We asked three hospital systems that have begun the move to GLNs that question. Here are their responses: Tom Stenger, manager, MMIS & Analytics, BJC HealthCare According to Stenger, one of the greatest benefits from the GLN enablement process is that it has forced both BJC and its trading partners to significantly improve the accuracy of their data, which has reduced billing and shipping errors. "As an organization performs each of these steps, it is improving the quality of its data exponentially, and as a result, there are fewer errors at every stage of the process enabling the organization to clean it faster and move through the stages quicker," said Stenger. BJC found that it some cases, there were as many as six account numbers assigned by a single supplier for the same ship-to location. BJC engaged its suppliers and eliminated any account numbers that did not serve a legitimate business purpose. If there were a case when it was deemed necessary to keep more than one account number for the same location, such as when a supplier needed to identify a unique ship-to/bill-to combination, BJC assigned a new GLN to this account number so that there was always a one-to-one relationship between account numbers and GLNs. Annie Choquette, associate director, Finance Information System, Boston Medical Center (BMC) Through the process, Choquette says her organization gained better understanding of the GLN implementation requirements, including: • BMC’s Lawson System materials management set-up • The data required for EDI documents, the data layout and the qualifier to indicate that the transaction contains a GLN (EDI NT segments and qualifier layout) • The process to register GLNs in the GS1 US GLN Registry for Healthcare • Requirements for communication with vendors and with GHX Choquette says that once GLNs are in place, Boston Medical Center will progress to the use of GTINs and the Global Data Synchronization Network (GDSN) to synchronize data between buying and selling organizations. Karl Danielson, system director, MMIS, Material Management, Norton Healthcare For Danielson, the biggest advantage is having a standard ship-to code for each of his organization’s locations, instead of having buyers keep rolodex cards or other methods for each ship-to for each vendor. This, he says, will make maintenance of the ERP system much easier and eliminate the need to keep account numbers by vendor. What other resources are available to hospitals and their trading partners that want to begin using GS1 standards? Several organizations and associations have resources available. Check out these sites: • AHRMM: http://www.ahrmm.org/ahrmm_app/ext/standards/index.html • GHX: http://www.ghx.com/about-ghx/industry-standards.aspx • GS1 Healthcare US: http://www.gs1us.org/gs1standardsinhealthcare • Medical Device Supply Chain Council: http://www.medsupplychain.org/udi-data.html • SMI: http://www.smisupplychain.com/datastandards/datastandards.html
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