Boston Children’s hails key partners, technology in growth

Aug. 24, 2018

Prodigo Contract Management: After diligently researching “off-the-shelf” contracting solutions, Boston Children’s Hospital’s Supply Chain Management department decided to form a multi-disciplinary project team to co-develop a leading-edge healthcare-centric contract workflow solution with Prodigo Solutions, called ProdigoContracts. This system would significantly improve cross-departmental usability, as well as streamline the overall contract management process. Supply Chain Management concurrently set out to eliminate off-contract purchases to help control the cost of supplies, including improved utilization of its Intalere GPO contracts. This contract management module manages users and approval workflows, accounts for distributor markups, and highlights rebate opportunities, amongst other features. The system automatically communicates pending expirations (ticklers) to Supply Chain Contracts staff, providing them with the opportunity to review expiring contracts and possibly renegotiate better pricing with suppliers. The system has also now been fully integrated with all inbound and outbound PeopleSoft ERP EDI transactions for improved spend visibility.

This project was a collaborative effort among many departments actively contracting for goods and services, including Supply Chain Management, Human Resources, Legal and Compliance. Several key project milestones had to be accomplished prior to deployment, including:

  • A thorough review of application functionality and data attributes
  • Identifying users and assigning user roles
  • Determining requirements and process for requesting contracts
  • Creating review and approval guidelines and processes
  • Establishing the contract categorization schema
  • Reviewing and understanding utilization for distributors and distributor markups
  • Identifying contracts that needed to be loaded for go-live
  • Preparing contract and item data
  • Training users and approvers

In February 2017, an initial 750 existing contracts (representing both Boston Children’s locally negotiated and Intalere GPO contracts) were loaded into the contract management system. Subsequently, approximately 200 more contract documents (original contracts, amendments, business associate agreements and other supporting contract documentation) were added to round-out the solution’s capabilities. In the coming months, to further ensure requestors are purchasing from the correct contracts from the correct suppliers at the correct prices, plans are underway to automate the Intalere GPO contract feed and contracted supply item data directly into the BCH PeopleSoft electronic requisitioning system.

ProdigoMarketplace: Not too long ago, BCH relied on standard requisition functionality within PeopleSoft; however, Supply Chain Management’s customers found the technology inadequate. Supply Chain worked with Prodigo Solutions to implement a suite of software applications that would support the unique requirements of Clinical and Research customers. A single portal was established to provide users with role-based flexibility, while incorporating standard processes for all customers to find and place orders, all within the PeopleSoft ERP.

ProdigoMarketplace satisfies the different purchasing requirements of clinicians and researchers, according to BCH: The Item Master File is used primarily by clinicians, supplier punch-out sites are used primarily by Researchand supplier catalogs and special request forms (for service, repairs, consulting and capital equipment) are used by both. Requisitions created from any of these sources generate a standard purchase order within PeopleSoft to facilitate order placement and processing by Purchasing’s buyers.

ProdigoMarketplace is integrated with PeopleSoft. As a result, requester history is maintained, reviews of usage are simplified and trends are more easily evaluated to identify potential cost saving opportunities. Supply Chain Management is growing the capacity of the ProdigoMarketplace every day to reduce the number of special requests. For example, by working with selected suppliers and Prodigo, Supply Chain Management implemented “Live Price Call.” This functionality seamlessly and automatically verifies pricing information between punch-out orders and supplier contract catalogs, ensuring accurate pricing. This has contributed to an increase in satisfaction for customers, suppliers and Purchasing. The fiscal results of this initiative include a man-hour efficiency savings of 9,000 hours, an internal rate of return of 58 percent, and an 11-to-1 ROI.

ProdigoXchange (Electronic Data Interchange): Supply Chain Management and its suppliers collaborated to reduce delayed payments and errors resulting from manual intervention to purchase orders. Now when customers place their orders via the ProdigoMarketplace, most requests are automatically forwarded to suppliers via ProdigoXchange EDI, simplifying the order confirmation process for the Purchasing department.

Purchase orders are visible to the buyer on a dashboard that alerts them to errors and acknowledgements. Identified issues may be resolved before they can escalate into bigger problems, such as credit holds.

Prodigo Contracts Electronic Workflow: An add-on to the ProdigoContracts, this electronic workflow process eliminated the lengthy off-line process previously in place. Prior to this implementation, requesters submitted a contract to Supply Chain to review via email. After negotiating and finalizing the terms of the contract, Supply Chain Management emailed the request to Finance, Legal, and/or VP-Level for review and approval. The request was then sent back to the requesting department for signature. ProdigoContracts Electronic Workflow eliminates this manually-intensive process by integrating with Marketplace and EDI to deliver automated contract compliance monitoring. ProdigoContracts also interfaces with Intalere GPO contract feeds.

Remote Desktop Access: Purchasing and MMIS worked with BCH’s Information Services department to implement the capability to remotely access and take control of a user’s desktop to see exactly what the user is seeing and resolve any issues they may experience while using the ERP, Marketplace, or any other applicable application. This service allows real-time education and system support, and reduces customer frustrations, while increasing their awareness of Supply Chain Management as a dependable, value added partner.

Cardinal Health Optifreight: Supply Chain Operations partnered with Cardinal Health to design and implement a comprehensive freight management system on the Optifreight Logistics platform. Optifreight provides Supply Chain Management with visibility and control of inbound shipments at a substantial savings. Available compliance reporting allows identification of departments that may need additional education to implement the new processes and best practices, such as usage of two-day shipping instead of overnight shipping within the same zone. Implementation of Optifreight delivered a 55.7 percent savings of $1.35 million in 2017.

Par Excellence ParMobile Barcode Readers: BCH was one of the first hospitals to maximize the inventory management process by using hand-held devices to track GUID barcodes. PAR Excellence‘s ParMobile platform tracks product lot numbers, serial numbers, and production dates (based on FDA requirements). BCH’s Cardiac Catheterization Lab uses ParMobile to scan QR barcodes.

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