UHC launches medical supply chain app
UHC, an alliance of the nation's leading nonprofit academic medical centers, announced the launch of a mobile analytics application for SpendLINK, UHC's proprietary suite of tools. The mobile app provides a subset of SpendLINK reports that can be accessed via an Apple iPad.
The application, developed by Novation, UHC's supply contracting company, allows users to quickly access information to support strategic purchasing decisions and provides on-demand visibility into price benchmarking.
The app is available only to UHC supply chain members, all of whom are using SpendLINK, a Web-based tool that integrates clinical and supply data for a comprehensive view of a hospital's supply expenses across the continuum of care.
“In the current climate of health care reform, it's critical to be able to access accurate and complete data in order to make strategic purchasing decisions,” Jake Groenewold, UHC's senior vice president of Supply Chain said. “SpendLINK has been instrumental in helping hospital executives and supply chain administrators do that. These 'on-the-go' reports make it even easier for hospital personnel to manage their supply chain and improve performance.”
The reports available on the mobile application are:
Price Benchmarking: Allows members to view their pricing and expenditures against those of 1,400 other hospitals. Intuitive dashboards allow users to view price performance, cost-saving opportunities, and price trends.
Price Leveling: Highlights products that are purchased by more than one hospital across a system (or integrated delivery network) where prices are not standardized, to show opportunities for savings.
Budget Impact Report: Illustrates pricing trends for the upcoming year by contract and spend category. The report offers projections on the cost of the raw materials needed to manufacture a given product and how those costs might affect budgets.
Supplier Diversity Report: Helps monitor a hospital's spend with diverse suppliers. Users can view a breakout of their diversity spend by type (minority-, veteran- or women-owned businesses), by vendor, or by product spend categories.
NOVAPLUS: Matches a broad range of products to their equivalents in the NOVAPLUS line, Novation's private-label brand and Identifies potential savings from converting to NOVAPLUS products.
“We are excited to provide solutions that allow UHC members to instantly track supply prices, make quicker decisions, and lower their overall supply costs,” Dan Sweeney, Novation's senior vice president, Information and Data Services said. “Mobile capabilities have grown exponentially and are revolutionizing the way hospitals can conduct business. These applications help speed up processes that used to take days, weeks, even months.
“This means UHC hospitals can improve their bottom line, increase operational efficiencies, and invest in other resources and activities that improve patient care and safety.”
The SpendLINK mobile application, which is free to UHC supply chain participants, can be found in the Apple App Store by searching for UHC.
Edited by Kevin Scarpati
