Now That You Have The Best Comprehensive Materials Management Solution Available From EHS & The Question Remains & Does Your Data Need a Check-up?
Clean, accurate data is the high octane fuel for your materials management software. ChoiceMED and EHS have teamed up to offer the comprehensive data cleansing solution. Protect your software investment and give it the fuel to make it perform to its full potential.
The key to improving efficiencies and reducing costs in the healthcare supply chain is increasing the accuracy of information shared between trading partners. More accurate data can minimize mistakes that lead to costly invoice exceptions and reconciliations, and ultimately, facilitate proper reimbursements. For a provider organization that manages a single facility or multiple facilities and ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) systems, each with a separate item master, the challenge of maintaining data accuracy is significant. Individual item masters within the same organization are likely to have different listings and descriptions for exactly the same product. The challenge of summarizing information from these separate data repositories, has made aggregating data by product type, product line or vendor historically difficult.
Improving data and order accuracy is the core of ChoiceMED's mission. Our ChoiceONETM data repository has been established and built on industry standards with normalized data verified by manufacturers. ChoiceMED establishes a customized data repository for each client. This customized data, teamed with ChoiceLINKTM, a specialized ongoing data maintenance tool, enables our clients to protect their data cleansing investment by providing continued maintenance of their data. ChoiceLINKTM provides the unique ability to validate daily purchase orders against the clients most accurate and up-to-date information. This "smart" process makes it possible for hospitals to maintain accurate data, make timely updates to their item masters, and identify and correct discrepancies when they arise.
Why Cleanse Your Data?
Without clean data your current system, updated software, or even a new system simply enables the delivery of bad data faster, increasing problems for both buyers and sellers. Hospitals can save money by cleansing their product data and ensuring that the correct line item, unit of measure and price is included in their purchase orders. The result can be fewer returned goods, less time spent resolving invoice exceptions, and a more accurate view of the products they purchase.
Their staff members, meanwhile, can spend more time on work that brings greater value to the organization, rather than on correcting order problems and manually processing data to create aggregated information.
Where Does The Cleansing Process Begin?
Every hospital that uses a materials management or ERP system maintains an item master, vendor master and purchase order history file as the central repositories for information related to the majority of items purchased. The item master is the most critical element of any material management or ERP system because it fundamentally affects every aspect of the purchasing process. Over time, products are continually added to item masters with many of the new additions simply duplicates of existing products already on file, but with slightly different descriptions or item numbers. As a result, buyers often have to sift through a myriad of products to find the correct item to purchase. Duplication increases the chances that inaccurate or outdated product information will be included in the purchase order. Additionally, new products purchased are not always added to the item master and are only reflected in the MMS/ERP systems purchase order history file.
Historically, cleansing item masters has been a complex task. First, a hospital had to establish a naming convention, and then complete a line-by-line inspection of all the data in the item master.
Next, the hospital had to rewrite the descriptions and remove, or in the case of some MMS/ERP systems simply inactivate the duplicate items. With most hospital item masters holding tens of thousands of items, years of accumulated problems and neglect can make the cleansing process a formidable task.
At ChoiceMED we understand those tasks and difficulties and know how to resolve them.
Our ChoiceDXTM diagnostic tool efficiently aggregates information by electronically consolidating item master data and identifying inconsistent, redundant and/or inaccurate information. ChoiceDXTM dynamic reporting capabilities provides detailed facts about your data Ð from identifying duplicate parts and pricing variances to providing corrected part numbers.
Is Item Master Cleansing A Worthwhile Investment?
Item master cleansing provides opportunities for hospitals and healthcare systems to increase their ordering accuracy and identify significant cost savings by:
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Ordering the right products the first time by following the 5 Rights of data integrity:
- The Right Vendor
- The Right Number
- The Right Product
- The Right UoM
- The Right Price
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Avoiding shipments of incorrect products and returned goods.
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Reducing invoice exceptions that impact staff time in accounts payable, receiving and materials management.
These benefits are achieved by the following services:
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Scrubbing item master data against our ChoiceONETM repository, the "gold standard" for total supply chain data readiness.
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Verifying all units of measure, ensuring the hospital is receiving the quantity they planned to order.
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Updating item status, and identifying items that are active manufacturer parts or that have been deleted, replaced, or have become obsolete.
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Reducing multiple instances of the same product.
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Increasing the accuracy of product purchasing and utilization reports.
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Linking products to the correct vendor, especially in cases where mergers or divestitures have occurred.
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Identifying duplicate and/or erroneous records.
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Utilizing the UNSPSC© code to classify medical/surgical items by function.
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Extracting purchase order history for reporting and if appropriate, updating item masters.
These services can be used by hospitals to create a core, consolidated item master that is e-commerce and supply chain ready, allowing hospitals to efficiently transact business with their trading partners.
How Can I Keep My Item Master Clean?
Once master files are cleansed, it's important to protect your investment and maintain the integrity of that data.
ChoiceMED has developed ChoiceLINKTM, a "smart" data maintenance program that identifies discrepancies with vendor names, item numbers, product descriptions, units of measure, and pricing in purchase orders. Detailed daily reports are automatically generated and can be viewed via a customized password-protected web portal.
How Can I Find Product Functional Equivalents?
ChoiceMED also offers ChoiceIQTM, used to identify product functional equivalents, putting you back in charge of your data. ChoiceIQ'sTM scalability allows everyone from CIO's to materials managers to department order clerks the flexibility to find the products and product information to fit their specific needs.
Can I Have My Data Categorized?
ChoiceMED categorizes all repository items using the UNSPSC standard. All ChoiceMED clinicians are segment technical advisors (STA) for the UNSPSC© code thus permitting them to submit changes, updates, and/or add new product codes to improve the code's effectiveness.
ChoiceMED clinicians can also apply product codes from industry standard information systems.
About ChoiceMED
ChoiceMED Data Solutions, LLC was opened in July 2003 to improve efficiencies across the healthcare supply chain, allowing hospitals to streamline their purchasing processes and reduce costs. ChoiceMED has built a robust product repository based on industry standards that contains normalized data maintained and verified by suppliers.
Our relentless pursuit for accuracy throughout our data repository enables ChoiceMED to successfully address the most common and costly problem inherent in healthcare procurement - inaccurate data.
ChoiceMED clients represent all members of the healthcare supply chain: hospitals and integrated delivery networks (IDNs), manufacturers, distributors, group purchasing organizations (GPOs), and other healthcare facilities. By providing item master cleansing and demonstrating a commitment to data accuracy, ChoiceMED is delivering real value across the entire supply chain.
Contact Information
Phil Meyer, RN pmeyer@choicemeddata.com
ChoiceMED, LLC
187 Ben Burton Circle
Bogart, GA 30622
Phone: 706.227.3282 or 706.202.0429 Toll Free: 866.951.3282 Fax: 706.227.3284
Website: www.choicemeddata.com Email: info@choicemeddata.com
