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For the healthcare supply chain, where pharmaceuticals and medical devices move through commerce from supplier to provider, the number 5 is remarkably powerful. That is the number of milestones required for hospitals to engage the healthcare supply chain totally electronically, in the same way most of the modern day retail sectors do today.
Dennis Byer, senior director of industry standards at Novation, and Dawn Burtram, a Global Location Number (GLN) consultant at Novation, have identified these 5 milestones for the successful implementation of GS1 Standards. These are based on their extensive field work with over 100 hospital members of Novation.
In their article, which can be found in Healthcare Purchasing News, Byer and Burtram say that “GS1 standards have the potential to transform healthcare, lower costs and increase opportunities to improve patient safety.”
In 2004, several GPOs collaborated to develop the GLN Registry for Healthcare, and since then, GPOs have worked to educate their hospital members on the business case for adopting the GS1 Standards. Most recently, HSCA and THE Committee for Health e-Standards (CHeS) launched It Just Takes One – a plan where each GPO encourages its member hospitals to validate their GLNs and begin transacting with them. Since its launch, the number of hospital facilities listed on the GLN Readiness Scorecard has increased from 500 to over 2,600. HSCA is also co-sponsoring 2012 regional workshops to further educate providers and suppliers on how to get to GLN readiness.
The number 5 also represents the steps that Byer and Burtram identify for hospitals to declare their GLN readiness. It all involves getting in and taking charge of the location data already posted on the GLN Registry – reviewing, updating, and verifying the accuracy of the GLNs and the GLN hierarchy. Byer and Burtram map out strategies from simple to complex hospital systems, describing alternative hierarchy schemes and describing how a single day’s effort can result in hospital readiness.
But 5 is not the only number of significance when it comes to supply chain cost savings, improved efficiencies in timing and accuracy for material management, and patient safety for healthcare. A series of numbers can establish equally powerful numeric identifiers. The 13-digit GLN and the 14-digit Global Trade Identification Number (GTIN), which along with the Global Data Synchronization Network, represent the backbone of the GS1 Standards – the very standards that allow retailers to monitor their inventory and re-order seamlessly, creating efficiencies, in terms of costs, timing, and accuracy. The industry has set 2012 for GTIN/GDSN Sunrise.
The article paints a clear roadmap for healthcare e-commerce for pharmaceuticals and medical devices. It also creates the detailed pathway for hospitals to declare GLN readiness, that very important first milestone on the way to successful implementation of the GS1 Standards.