Supply Chain

Some of the country's most prominent healthcare systems, including the Geisinger Health System, Intermountain Healthcare, Kaiser Permanente, the Mayo Clinic and the Sisters of Mercy Health System, have joined together to adopt GS1 standards for their supply chains.

The Health Industry Group Purchasing Association has called Medtronic's cancellation of some of its largest group purchasing organization contracts "nothing short of an attack on America's hospitals."

Cardinal Health has joined the Environmental Protection Agency's SmartWay Transport Partnership, a program in which the EPA and industry leaders work together to reduce greenhouse gases and air pollution.

Overall U.S. healthcare prices increased marginally from December 2010 to January 2011, rising 0.1 percent, according to the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Hospitals could see substantial savings by instituting environmentally-friendly practices in operating rooms, says a study published in the February issue of Archives of Surgery.

As the price of a barrel of oil skyrockets, spurring fears of a worldwide recession, officials at Novation, a healthcare contracting supply company, and its members will be able to track supply costs better than before because the Texas-based company just began publishing its Budget Projections Impact Reports monthly instead of bi-yearly.

Recent deals highlight need to coordinate RCM decisions

Chris Charland is the senior director of capital equipment at Novation. He spoke recently with Healthcare Finance News editor Richard Pizzi about healthcare supply chain management trends to expect in 2011.

In early January, Blue Shield of California proposed rate hikes for nearly 200,000 individual policy holders that would see some members' premiums jump as much as 59 percent on March 1.

After more than a month of corporate chess that saw Community Health Systems launch a $3.3 billion hostile takeover bid for hospital operator Tenet Healthcare, things have quieted down.