It’s all in the dessert… oops, the details!
Prodigo’s Marketplace is the cherry on top for ensuring that users have access to the right item, at the right price, from the right source. But how does the supply chain make this happen, especially when data is stored in disparate locations, is not representative of your preferred vendor, and changes so frequently?
According to the Healthcare Supply Chain Association, 30% to 50% of all supply chain purchases are categorized as being “off contract.” Implications of this include:
- Lower contract utilization and compliance rates
- Price parity across and within the same location (that is, different prices for the same item)
- Lower realization on projected savings
- Increased match exceptions yield an increase in manual intervention
A health system’s transition to the cloud seemingly provides the opportunity to improve these performance rates. However, such transitions often highlight a chasm in data and the need for it to be harmonized, transformed, and enriched.
Prodigo’s solutions were designed to support this need and are more relevant than ever due to how data flows into an ERP. The value in Prodigo’s flexible workflow is that it harmonizes all the disparate data sources and transforms inbound contract data that can be purchased or fed into the ERP for downstream integrations to other clinical subsystems.
Operationalizing contract items and prices ensures accuracy, and that compliance is at the forefront of the requisition process. Allowing contracted items to flow into Prodigo’s Marketplace not only reduces the burden of maintaining the item master, but also minimizes the number of special requests, while providing transparency and decision support – hence the cherry on top!
When ERP integration throws you lemons…
Operationalize the Contract
Operationalizing a contract, which mostly represents manufacturer-based attribution so that it can be made purchasable, requires harmonization and transformation to:
- Transform your GPO Supplier ID to reflect your ERP’s supplier ID
- Association of the applicable vendor part number
- Extrapolation of the contract price to reflect the preferred purchase units of measure
- Computing cost + markup for items purchased through distribution
- ERP identifiers (ERP item ID, GL accounts, category codes, etc.)
Prodigo connects external and internal data from various industry sources – such as local contracts, GPO contracts, distributor data, category codes, and ERP data – and harmonizes how the item is stored and viewed by end-users who are shopping. There’s no easy button to make this work and often requires the use of crosswalks to support connecting these disparate data sources, but the sweet reward of improving a client’s KPIs makes it all worth it.
Item Enrichment
Prodigo automates the enrichment, harmonization, and transformation of a client’s data with metadata that resides in Prodigo’s global repository of more than 11 million items under management – such as GTIN, UNSPSC classification, HCPCS codes, item images, descriptions, recall notifications, and more. This ensures accurate product identification, documentation, and traceability and, in the process, increases patient safety.
Item enrichment is mostly required when operationalizing contracts. Most ERPs have constraints around the number of characters in an item description and often require an UNSPSC (or categorization). In addition to standardized descriptions (with a length of 254 characters), Prodigo also provides abbreviated descriptions at various lengths.
Finally, with downstream requirements, device identifiers have become vital to the success of the integration between the ERP and EHR. Prodigo has nearly four million GTINs within its global catalog that can be enriched to a client’s content to meet this need or to improve barcode scan rates.
Automation
An integration between Marketplace and contracts enables more supply chain control over the formulary of approved items that are available to end-users. Approved administrators for clients that utilize both solutions can select items directly from contracts to be injected into Marketplace, providing end-users with visibility to contracted items when placing orders.
The synchronization of Marketplace and Navigator ensures that prices displayed during the ordering process are contractually accurate, which decreases downstream efforts to resolve price discrepancies. Through automation, the system will apply a tag to a contracted item when it is inserted from Navigator into Marketplace. Contracted items will then be prioritized via Marketplace’s search algorithm when an end-user initiates a search, thereby ensuring that a contract is highly utilized.
Additionally, through Data Gateway, Prodigo leverages autonomous data extraction to compute and export updates to a client’s ERP item master regularly, ensuring that the item master – which in turn feeds downstream EHR or EMR systems – contains the most accurate and up-to-date price data.
Transitioning to the Cloud… the whipped cream layer
The harmonization of disparate data sources enables smoother transitions to cloud-based ERP solutions by ensuring accuracy and compliance at the front end of the requisition process.
Prodigo’s products enhance both traditional ERPs and cloud-based solutions. During the past few years, several health systems have “gone live” by deploying Prodigo’s solutions in the cloud, and many have selected Prodigo to partner on cloud transitions over the coming year.
Marketplace and Data Hub integrate with cloud-based ERP technology to provide a virtual item master as a single source of truth for item and price data, which can be shared across the entire supply chain.
Prodigo’s procurement platform extends the value of cloud ERP by driving utilization to the right contracts across all product and purchased-service categories. Prodigo provides the tools needed to improve data quality, optimize procurement workflow, and control enterprise spend through a single managed process. This helps to reduce supply chain variance, delivering value that ultimately extends to patients.