The company’s experience in North America demonstrates that significant savings can be achieved by implementing procurement best practices and increasing efficiencies in the healthcare supply chain. In the United States, for example, where healthcare organisations are often business-run and business-led, GHX and its customers are on course to reach its target of generating $5 billion (approximately £3.2 billion) in savings for the industry within five years. Recently, GHX passed the $2 billion mark.
Drawing on this international experience, GHX made four broad recommendations in response to the Department of Health’s procurement guidance:
1. Adopt a longer-term approach: Building the necessary process and technological foundations takes time and much of the NHS is not yet in a position where it can claim to conduct ‘strategic procurement.’
2. Integrate IT platforms: A degree of commonality or integration is required across the often disparate IT platforms used in NHS procurement departments. This will enable benchmarking using common metrics.
3. Learn from forward-thinking trusts: There are already pockets of excellence in the NHS and some trusts have made significant savings and are now prepared for the roll out of industry standards, including GS1. The industry as a whole can learn from the experience of these providers.
4. Collaboration is the key to success: The true potential level of savings cannot be realised by trusts operating in isolation. Only through collaborative, aggregated efforts can the NHS maximize the benefit of strategic procurement and an optimized supply chain.
“Our experience across multiple national markets suggests that streamlined, business-led procurement practices, with senior-level accountability can deliver significant savings,” said Pete Nelson, Vice President of Technology and Operations, GHX Europe. “We are supportive of this initial step to raise the profile of procurement and hope this is the beginning of more technologically-proficient, well-linked healthcare processes. GHX software has been selected by nearly 50 per cent of acute NHS Trusts and as healthcare providers realise the benefits, more and more are turning to e-commerce.”
GHX Customers
Chris Slater, Head of Procurement, Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust: “A transaction exchange and a catalogue management tool are the basic foundational building blocks of an efficient and connected healthcare supply chain. At Leeds we are now piloting track and trace of heart valves across theatres at the Trust and this is only possible because of the investments we have made in ICT infrastructure over the years.”
Jan Nangle, Head of e-Commerce at NHS Shared Business Services (NHS SBS) Commercial Procurement Solutions: “Engagement with GHX solutions will increasingly become a requirement of doing business with our members.”
About GHX
Global Healthcare Exchange, LLC (GHX), a healthcare technology and services company, helps reduce the cost of doing business in healthcare by enabling better supply chain management. GHX makes it easier for hospitals, other healthcare providers and the suppliers that do business with them to drive cost and inefficiency out of their processes. Working with GHX, the healthcare organizations that make up the GHX Global Network are on track to save $5 billion by 2014—savings that can be invested in such things as hiring more nurses, providing care to uninsured children or developing new medical products. GHX is owned by organizations on both the buy and sell side of the healthcare supply chain, including some of the largest companies in the world. See here for more information: www.ghx.com
About GHX Europe
GHX Europe was founded in 2001 in Brussels, Belgium. Since that time, GHX has grown into a market leader in Europe enabling hospitals and suppliers to conduct business with a greater number of their trading partners through a single exchange. GHX has become a collaborative community connected through a robust, reliable and scalable infrastructure where providers and suppliers can conduct business with one another electronically. Today, GHX delivers customers a wide range of offerings that drive better efficiency, reduce costs and improve operational performance. GHX Europe is headquartered in Brussels and has offices in Cambridge (UK), Frankfurt and Dusseldorf (Germany), Baar (Switzerland) and Barcelona (Spain). See here for more information: www.ghxeurope.com
About NHS Procurement: Raising Our Game
‘NHS procurement: raising our game’ sets out proposed actions for NHS trusts and the Department of Health and focuses on taking immediate action to start tackling key areas for improvements. The Department of Health has published this guidance in advance of a procurement strategy planned for later in 2012 that will be developed following a wider call for evidence. Read NHS Procurement: Raising our Game.
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Press Enquiries:
Ed Palferman, GHX UK Ltd
T: +44 (0)1223 393 898
M: +44 (0)7833 473 032
E: ed.palferman@ghxeurope.com
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