Fast Foreward
Brent Johnson feels a bit swamped these days. And rightfully so. Amid the ownership turbulence of the group purchasing industry, he’s turning Intermountain-run Amerinet on its ear and industry heads to boot.
At the time of this writing in early January, Intermountain-Amerinet was planning to announce its new name a few weeks later. HPN Online’s Daily Update will reveal it once it’s made known.
Last summer, right after Johnson accepted the Amerinet CEO’s post, he said with a twinkle in his eyes that the “new” Amerinet would pursue the fee-for-supply-chain-service route going forward in lieu of supplier administrative fees. This was an eyebrow-arching declaration because it would reverse a model the traditional GPO industry had enjoyed for nearly three decades after borrowing it from the investor-owned hospital chains.
History buffs may recall that most not-for-profit hospitals worked with state and local hospital associations and product category-specific buying groups for contracting and purchasing services from the early 1900s through the 1960s. The providers paid for those services directly. Among the for-profit hospital chains, which owned the facilities they managed, the hospitals didn’t pay for those services. Instead, the chains charged suppliers administrative fees to gain access to their membership.
Not surprisingly, some of the middle-to-upper-level management executives, who identified as “entrepreneurs,” saw this group purchasing model as a boon to implement in the not-for-profit hospital segment. And why not? Not-for-profit hospitals could gain access to contracting services for “free” because the suppliers would pay for it.
Such a marketing epiphany reshaped the group purchasing industry, punctuating the golden age and ushering in the silver age of GPOs that lasted well into the 1990s before the Clinton healthcare reform years disrupted the status quo.
To his credit, Johnson never participated in that storied history as he worked supply chain in other industries. When he finally emerged in healthcare a decade ago, Johnson didn’t have any of that baggage and admittedly spent a few years scratching his head trying to understand healthcare’s convoluted group purchasing models as he was developing and launching Intermountain’s successful consolidated service center model that helped to earn him a Bellwether League Inc. class induction in 2014.
To wit, Johnson maintains some strong opinions about the state of group purchasing, but in an email exchange with Healthcare Purchasing News he lamented that he didn’t have the time to participate in HPN’s extensive GPO coverage in this month’s print, online and digital editions. In fact, he marveled with all sincerity that interest in Amerinet is so high that he can’t wait to sit down with HPN and pull back the curtain on what Amerinet has in store for members and the industry.
“I have 100 percent confidence the direction that we are taking Amerinet is going to be successful,” Johnson crowed. “We have too many people waiting in line to talk to us.”
If you think Johnson sounds like a kid being given carte blanche in a Toys R Us or Best Buy, you’re not alone.
With the emergence of Vizient and the fortification of contracts and executives at Premier and HealthTrust, along with Amerinet’s “classic restoration,” there hasn’t been this much effervescence in the group purchasing industry since the formation of Premier and Novation in the late 1990s.
During the last few decades, GPOs have expanded their influence and reach beyond the heritage bulk/group buying and contracting functions into data and labor services, revenue cycle, local and regional cooperatives, consolidated service centers, shared service operations and the like, shifting to “value-based” from “volume-based” buying.
Amerinet, under Johnson, seems to be returning a bit to its roots, reinforcing that retro may be the new black. And the pointed, if not redefined, push on pricing may not be that far behind.
| UPDATE: After nearly three decades as AmeriNet and then Amerinet, one of the nation’s leading group purchasing organizations yesterday unveiled its brand new identity of Intalere, first reported by Healthcare Purchasing News… Read the EXCLUSIVE interview. |
Rick Dana Barlow
About the Author
Rick Dana Barlow | Senior Editor
Rick Dana Barlow is Senior Editor for Healthcare Purchasing News, an Endeavor Business Media publication. He can be reached at [email protected].
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