From Healthcare Purchasing News: Standards momentum has staying power, GS1 Healthcare US chief says

GS1 Healthcare US President Dennis Harrison recognizes that history is not on his side when it comes to herding healthcare industry providers and suppliers toward adopting and implementing a universal standard for supply chain data.

Numerous past initiatives have ignited and flamed out for a variety of reasons that span downright resistance to the ease of price-comparing products to mere apathy and indifference, as in if you procrastinate or ignore it the initiative will go away.

Harrison isn't de-motivated or deterred one iota. Not even the results of a Healthcare Purchasing News reader poll discouraged him. In that survey, conducted earlier in the summer, HPN asked readers if they would meet or beat the December 31 sunrise date for GLN readiness. More than two-thirds responded that they wouldn't. Editor's Note: For a GS1 Healthcare US "scorecard" of providers, suppliers, GPOs and software suppliers, visit: http://www.gs1us.org/sectors/healthcare/industry_readiness_scorecards.

In an exclusive interview with HPN, Harrison admitted he wasn't surprised by those numbers and, in fact, expected such a response.

But he also doesn't see the looming year-end sunrise date as a make-or-break proposition for GS1 Healthcare US.

What Harrison's group, an industry-specific segment of GS1 US, is trying to achieve doesn't resemble how a manufacturer or distributor strives to meet or exceed sales quotas. Neither GS1 US nor European-based GS1 issued marching orders for him to meet certain numbers, according to Harrison. Nevertheless, a line in the sand was drawn.

"Early on I told [my superiors] that if that's the criteria, walk away now," Harrison said. "It's not very smart. The real driver is whether they wanted to do this or not. They did. And the issue never came up again."

Harrison further revealed that the fees GS1 Healthcare US collects from providers and suppliers doesn't cover operations. "We're lucky if we break even," he added.

"As long as the initiative is moving we've got an open road," Harrison said. "That doesn't mean I can have 20 people here to support what we're doing. Overall, I think we manage it very well with nine people. We just have to believe."

For what it's worth, industry sources have told HPN that GS1 Healthcare US' efforts have progressed farther and faster than previous initiatives.

Round robin

Yet achieving critical mass among providers and suppliers remains a lofty goal, if not an uphill battle. And the finger-pointing remains circuitous.

"More suppliers are getting ready, but they're not ready to declare readiness," indicated Mary Beth Lang, senior vice president, business intelligence, Amerinet Inc., and president, Diagnostix, an Amerinet division, during a GS1 Healthcare US-sponsored event at the Association for Healthcare Resource & Materials Management annual conference. "They're waiting to see what the FDA will do."

But Lang and several others were quick to point out that the FDA wasn't a red herring nor a convenient excuse for inactivity and indecision.

"The FDA is enough of an impetus for dedicating and allocating resources," Lang insisted.

Certainly, the FDA "gets it," according to Joe Pleasant Jr., senior vice president and CIO, Premier Inc., but he questioned whether any other federal agency does and even if the issue of supply chain data standards is high enough on the priority list in the face of electronic medical records, for example.

"We're a long ways away from getting all these systems working together in a common way," Pleasant noted. "We can't do anything at the top without a foundation at the bottom."

Dennis Black, director, eBusiness, BD, emphasized that the private sector should move this along.

"Manufacturers have to enable this," Black said. "Healthcare providers have to drive this. We've been involved in [standards] since 1972. Now we're getting critical mass. It's important that manufacturers do their part in delivering good, clean numbers."

Pleasant argued that healthcare providers, including group purchasing organizations, need to be sending a consistent message to their suppliers.

Vance Moore, president, Resource Optimization & Innovation, concurred. "We're committed to this," he noted. "If [suppliers] are not willing to work with us we'll have to apply our own numbers to do this. We've let our suppliers know of the sunrise dates in contracts for the last two years. It's important that all packages have relatively common language among providers and GPOs."

But Moore acknowledged the influence of federal regulations: "People make decisions when they're forced to make decisions."

Software suppliers also play a key role in that their systems must be able to accommodate standards language.

In fact, Rosalind Parkinson, administrative director, materiel systems, The Ohio State University Medical Center, indicated her information technology department is helping them keep pace as much as possible.

"We're gerry-rigging fields for new numbers and they're doing programming to have them interact with other systems," Parkinson said. "It's not elegant but it needed to be done so we did it."

Any standard must be able to move among IT systems, including the enterprise resource planning system, clinical systems, warehouse management systems and point-of-use systems, according to Moore. "We don't want bubble gum and bailing wire as we say in the South," he quipped.

In defense of software suppliers, Black countered that it's "far more complicated" to use the GLN in a healthcare setting than in retail.

"In retail, the bar code identifies just the product," he noted. "Healthcare wants more information included, such as lot numbers, expiration dates, quantities, serial numbers, etc. What's done at the receiving dock is different than what's needed in multiple clinical settings within hospitals, such as the [operating room]. There are many more ship-to points in a hospital than there are in a single retail store."

Barlow, Rick Dana."Standards momentum has staying power, GS1 Healthcare US chief says."hpnonline.com. Healthcare Purchasing News. December 2010. Web. 09 December 2010.