“It takes a village to raise a child.” Most have heard this well-known proverb, but how many have considered how the statement applies to Master Data Management (MDM)? The statement reflects the importance of a community-minded approach and how working together can achieve a common goal. The modernization of healthcare has exposed and highlighted the importance of a common goal: to improve data quality. More specifically, the quality of item attribute data that Integrated Delivery Networks (IDNs) rely on to deliver quality care and control overall costs.
We hear the term MDM used more in daily discussion, but does that mean that everyone fully understands what it is? MDM is defined by Gartner as “a technology-enabled discipline in which business and IT work together to ensure the uniformity, accuracy, stewardship, semantic consistency and accountability of the enterprise’s official shared master data assets. Master data is the consistent and uniform set of identifiers and extended attributes that describes the core entities of the enterprise including customers, prospects, citizens, suppliers, sites, hierarchies, and chart of accounts.”*
An MDM strategy delivers secure access to accurate data, so health systems can overcome significant negative impacts of poor data quality on the clinical enterprise, operational efficiency, and financial performance. To ensure accuracy and up-to-date product information, Prodigo Solutions manages data connections to more than 1,600 healthcare manufacturers and suppliers, including Johnson & Johnson, Smith & Nephew, Zimmer BioMet, and Cardinal Health. This ensures data quality and data integrity from the source throughout the hospital’s ERP and clinical ecosystem.
To streamline data maintenance, manufacturer content is integrated directly through data feeds or the GS1 Global Data Synchronization Network (GS1 GDSN). According to GS1, “GS1 standards are the most widely used system of standards in the world. The GDSN is the world's largest product data network and a global product data network that enables the flow of product content into a registry via GDSN data pools, making it possible for any company, in any market, to share high-quality product information seamlessly.”
Prodigo has partnered with 1WorldSync, a GS1 GDSN certified data pool, to assist with the ongoing sourcing and transfer of manufacturer content. This partnership improves the collection and standardization of product information, utilizing the GDSN to improve the accuracy and completeness of data across the supply chain and clinical workflows.
But more work needs to be done across healthcare to adopt global standards and implement MDM best practices that ensures health systems have unencumbered access to accurate manufacturer content in an efficient way.
Why is this important? Enriched item content (images, item description, GTIN, UNSPSC) contributes to many value points in healthcare, including:
- Patient Safety. Correct and complete product identification minimizes the risk of the wrong item being introduced in a patient care event.
- Contract Compliance. Validates that each purchased item is tied to an active, valid contract price to avoid overpayments and invoice match exceptions.
- Contract Utilization. Directs purchasing decisions to the right item, from the right source, at the right price to maximize realization on the savings negotiated in your contracts.
- Data Maintenance Automation. Reduces the labor cost needed to keep item and price data up to date.
- Perfect Orders. Data is accurate and complete, resulting in less time spent resolving errors in the supply chain and finance departments.
- DPO/DSO. Reduces errors that lead to lower costs and delayed hospital payments.
- Regulatory Compliance. Improves product traceability throughout the supply chain and clinical enterprise.
- Revenue Cycle. Provides accurate product identification and clinical documentation.
As one of healthcare’s largest data aggregators, Prodigo can provide health systems of all sizes a single source of truth to improve data quality.
Prodigo’s Data Hub solution is a robust MDM platform that captures, manages, and shares data by connecting the customer’s items, attributes, and metadata with the right price to create a single source of truth for the customer’s supply chain.
Data Hub delivers accurate master data to fulfill the requirements of a modern digital supply chain throughout all levels of the IDN’s organization, including supply chain, clinical, and financial departments:
- Data governance. Integrate multiple data streams into a single source of truth connected to finance, supply chain, and clinical workstreams.
- Data management. Cleanse, enrich, and standardize master data for both transactional and clinical compliance.
- Data integration. Gateway to orchestrate data flow from upstream data sources to downstream operational, clinical, and analytics workflows.
There is no denying that master data is a heavy lift. Leveraging industry partnerships supports Prodigo’s community-minded approach. As healthcare moves toward an integrated ecosystem of purpose-built ERP functionality, it is vital that all stakeholders – manufacturers, suppliers, healthcare organizations, and solution providers – come together to work smarter, not harder, ensuring healthcare continues to improve data quality to support transformation of their supply delivery systems.
*Gartner IT Glossary, “Master Data Management (MDM)”, 29 April 2021. https://www.gartner.com/en/information-technology/glossary/master-data-management-mdm