Contract Administration Conference
Contract Administration Conference | Healthcare Supply Chain Collaborative
June 23-24, 2021 | 100% Virtual Event
The Value of Contracting Standards Has Never Been Greater

Pricing management for healthcare products has long been complicated – and the influx of new suppliers and agreements during the COVID-19 pandemic has added to the complexity. So it’s more important than ever to take part in the industry event that drives standardization and best practices in contract administration. The Healthcare Supply Chain Collaborative’s Contract Administration Conference brings together contract administration professionals from across the healthcare supply chain – distributors, manufacturers, GPOs, and providers – all working to improve processes, reduce costs, and achieve pricing accuracy. If you’re involved in negotiating or administering pricing, chargebacks, or both – you need to attend!

Find out more about HIDA's Improving Pricing Accuracy initiative. Pricing Accuracy►

Download The Event Brochure►

Who Should Attend

  • Contract administrators: manufacturers, distributors, and providers involved in contract administration, pricing management, chargeback/rebate management, and other pricing-related options
  • National accounts leaders: anyone involved in managing GPO and health system relationships or negotiating pricing and contracts
  • Group purchasing organization (GPO) professionals, regional purchasing coalition representatives, and healthcare supply chain leaders: anyone involved in contract negotiations, pricing management, and/or supplier relationships
  • Department leaders from related areas including IT and finance
  • Anyone else involved in healthcare product contracting

How You’ll Benefit

  • Examine best practices for contract management, pricing administration, chargebacks, and more
  • Learn and advance standard practices for improving efficiency, achieving pricing accuracy, and eliminating rework
  • Meet your counterparts from “the other side of the table”
  • Build the relationships that will enable you to improve joint processes

Leveraging The Advantages Of Virtual

For everyone’s health and safety, the 2021 Contract Administration Conference will be virtual. It’s a great opportunity to bring more of your team and benefit from lower registration fees and no travel costs!

HIDA’s virtual platform offers some great advantages:

  • Ability to attract key thought leaders as presenters and panelists
  • Live, face-to-face discussions and networking via video conference
  • Real-time interaction during conference sessions
  • Convenience and cost savings
  • Safety

Kudos From Last Year’s Attendees

“For conversations with everyone in the industry to see how we can all improve the process – there isn’t a better opportunity than this conference.”
Molly McLaughlin, Contract Administration Supervisor, AliMed

“If you want industry standards and solutions, this is the conference to attend because it collaboratively brings together suppliers, providers and GPOs to create the solutions.”
Melanie Proctor, Senior Director, Supply Chain Data Management, Premier, Inc.

“A great way to collaborate to address standardization and solve common pain points.”
Jennifer Whitehead, Sr. Manager, Chargebacks, Mckesson Medical-Surgical


What Industry Leaders Had To Say About HIDA’s First Virtual Event

“HIDA always provides a great platform, no matter the circumstance, to learn from industry and government experts while having a chance to meet with many of the key people in our industry.”
Bill McLaughlin Jr., CEO, IMCO

“Education sessions were incredibly valuable. So happy HIDA moved ahead with a virtual venue to keep us connected.”
Larry Kernis, Director of National Accounts, Distribution, Nestle Health Science

Registration And Pricing

REGISTER

Registration Fees
  • Member: $599 per person
  • Non-Member: $899 per person
  • Provider: $499 per person

Registration Policy
Space may be limited. Registration is first-come, first served. Registration forms sent without payment will not be processed. Any photos taken at this event are property of HIDA and can be published without permission in the HIDA materials.

Cancellation Policy
Participants must cancel in writing via mail, email or fax in order to request a refund, less a $35 processing fee. A full refund minus the processing fee will be available prior to April 12, 2021 and a 50% refund will be available between April 13 and April 30, 2021. While no refunds will be available after May 1, a company may substitute a registrant at any time without penalty.

Distributor Contact:

Kelley Taft»
Director, Membership
HIDA, 703-838-6127

Manufacturer Contact:

Cindy Chen, MS»
Sr. Manager, Associates Program, 
HIDA, 703-838-6114

Event Contact and Provider, GPO, Service Provider Contact:

Kendall Lemmert, MHA»
Program Manager, Healthcare Supply Chain Collaborative
HIDA, 703-838-6138

Agenda

Wednesday, June 23

(Times and topics subject to change.)

11:00–11:45am ET
The Big Picture: 7 Trends In Group Purchasing And Contracting

John Pritchard

John Pritchard
Publisher
Journal of Healthcare Contracting

The COVID-19 pandemic suddenly and dramatically changed healthcare contracting. Contract compliance concerns faded away as providers and distributors focused on finding critical supplies from existing partners and new sources. Contract administration professionals, meanwhile, had new challenges in managing hastily negotiated agreements and pricing. In this session, get a macro view of the healthcare purchasing landscape, including:

  • The pandemic’s impact on purchasing and contracting strategies: what will stick, and what won’t
  • Local, regional, and national sourcing and contracting
  • Group purchasing in the acute, non-acute, and post-acute segments

11:50am–12:10pm ET
Roundtable Discussions

12:15–12:45pm ET
A Proactive Approach to Pricing Alignment: How SCL Health Collaborates With Its Distributor And GPO To Drastically Decrease Price Discrepancies

Rob Brandt

Rob Brandt
Senior Director, Sales Administration
Medline Industries

Nancy Ewing

Nancy Ewing
Director, Supply Chain
SCL Health

Ryan Mearini

Ryan Mearini
Executive Account Director, Acute Sales
Medline Industries

Lauren Bradley, Sourcing Analyst, SCL Health

Pricing accuracy depends on coordination across many stakeholders. At SCL, weekly meetings bring together the system’s distributor partner, GPO, and representative, team members from clinical sourcing and item master management. The result: quick action to resolve mismatches and ensure that errors don’t proliferate. In this case study, get ideas for:

  • Organizing the files and data necessary to manage pricing alignment
  • Identifying and tackling the largest PO discrepancies
  • Getting to root causes: missing contracts, different tiers assignments, locations not receiving contract or tier parity, unit of measure issues, and so on

1:15–1:45pm ET
Healthcare Cybersecurity: What Contract Administration Professionals Need To Know

Rob Suarez

Rob Suarez
VP, Chief Information Security Officer
BD

Cyberattacks on healthcare organizations have increased since the beginning of the pandemic. These attacks make it clear that cybersecurity is more important than ever. In this session, gain insights on collaborating with your trading partners to protect your data.

1:50-2:15pm ET
Roundtable Discussions: How Can Contract Admin Professionals Reduce Cybersecurity Risks?

2:15–2:45pm ET
Technology Solutions For Improving Pricing Accuracy: 5 Ideas In 30 Minutes

Check out technology offerings for contract administration. Each company will have 5 minutes to introduce their solution. If you’re intrigued and want more details, you can visit the vendor’s virtual booth after this session.

2:45-3:15pm ET
Technology Solutions Vendor Visits

Speak directly with technology vendors and find out how their solutions can address your pricing accuracy and data management needs.

3:15–3:45pm ET
Streamlining Contracts During A Merger: How Supply Chain And IT Worked Together To Turn A Mess Into A Success

Jordan Scott

Jordan Scott
Supply Chain IT Program Manager
HonorHealth

A system merger provided the impetus for HonorHealth to do a major contract clean-up and streamline its agreements from about 3000 contracts down to less than 1400. In this case study, learn about how the system saved time, money, and aggravation by:

  • Eliminating redundant contracts that lead to errors and mismatches
  • Investing in new data analytics technology
  • Creating a Value Analysis Team to streamline communication between departments

3:50–4:25pm ET
New Efficiencies From A New Standard! Introducing The GPO Admin Fee Reporting Toolkit

After two years of work, the GPO Admin Fee Reporting Workgroup has completed a new standard template for communicating fees to GPOs. This will save suppliers time and effort. The workgroup’s leadership includes GPO leaders, which will speed acceptance for the new standard. Find out how it works and how you’ll benefit in this important session.

4:30-5:10pm ET
Concurrent Discussion Groups

  • Aligning The External And Internal Teams: Sales And Contract Administration
  • Comparing EDI Formats For Chargeback Requirements: EDI 844 vs 867
  • GPO Admin Fee Reporting Toolkit: Next Steps
  • Smarter Contracts: Inking Agreements That Drive Performance And Efficiency

5:15-5:30pm ET
Roundtable Discussions: What Have You Learned Or Improved During The COVID Chaos?

5:30–6:30pm ET
Happy Hour

Thursday, June 24


11:00–11:30am ET
A New Approach To Chargeback Requests: Why We Adopted The 844

Jennifer Whitehead, Senior Manager, McKesson

More med-surg companies are starting to adopt the EDI 844 which in the past was only used in the pharmaceutical industry. In this session, manufacturers and distributors will share:

  • Why they adopted the 844
  • How the change impacted chargeback processes and benefited both sides
  • What they’ve learned from the implementation process

11:35–11:55am ET
Adoption: Moving The Industry Forward On Pricing Alignment

Pricing alignment is extremely challenging: thousands of non-standard business processes, definitions, and data formats. Wouldn’t it be easier if everyone just did things the same way? Yes! And that’s why the industry created standards: to create greater pricing alignment and reduce pricing exceptions between trading partners. In this session, examine the barriers to standards implementation – and the benefits that await organizations that adopt established best practices. They’ll address:

  • Standard customer identifiers
  • Chargeback denial reason codes
  • Notification timing
  • EDI transactions and their standard CSV equivalents

12:00-12:30pm ET
Roundtable Discussions: What Are The Barriers To Embracing Industry Standards?

12:35–1:00pm ET
Simple Steps Toward Pricing Accuracy: Standardizing Addresses, UOM, Product Numbers, and Contract Numbers

Susan LaFountain

Susan LaFountain
Product Contract Data Utilization Manager
GHX

Pricing accuracy is complicated, but some of the fixes are simple! In this session, get a whole to-do list of ideas for ways to improve contract management by adopting industry standards. Solutions include:

  • Formatting addresses (for example, street, st. or str.?) to increase matches
  • Avoiding unit of measure (UOM) errors
  • Getting the numbers right

1:35-2:15pm ET
Discussion Groups

  • Working With Trading Partners Who Don’t Use Industry Standards
  • Can Class Of Trade Be Standardized?
  • Rolling Out A New IT Solution: What Works And What Doesn’t?
  • Best Practices For Collaborative Pricing Management

2:15-2:45pm ET
Technology Solutions Vendor Visits

Check out technology offerings for contract administration. Each company will have 5 minutes to introduce their solution. If you’re intrigued and want more details, you can visit the vendor’s virtual booth after this session.

3:00–3:30pm ET
Case Study: How Ansell Achieved Near-Perfect Price Matching Through New Tech Tools

Kimberly Hill, Manager, Contracts and Pricing Administration, Ansell Healthcare

In this case study, hear how Ansell implemented a new customer master tool to facilitate chargeback processing and sales reporting. The initiative allowed the company to manage a complete cross reference and customer profile that increased match rates for distributor chargeback submissions from about 70% to 92-100%. Learn about how the system:

  • Connects contracts and customers
  • Improves management of parent/child relationships
  • Provides sales and contract operations with full visibility to customer profiles at every level

3:35–4:15pm ET
Case Study: Using Blockchain To Manage Contracts Between Healthcare Trading Partners

Chad Connelly, Product Director, Premier

Alex Wise, Senior Director, Contract Administration, McKesson

Susanne Somerville, CEO, The MediLedger Network

Blockchain has been touted as a potential game-changer for pricing and contract administration. The theory is that by creating a single accurate ledger of contract information that all parties can rely on, disputes will be minimized. In this session, hear about a new network now being tested in the pharma industry to do just that. The initiative includes pharma manufacturers, distributors, and GPOs, enabling by a technology partner. Hear from a panel of participants on how they hope the system will:

  • Avoid mismatches in customer identification, eligibility, and pricing
  • Allow manufacturers to enforce validation rules on rosters before GPOs share them
  • Provide an accurate time-stamp on pricing notifications
  • Ensure real-time pricing synchronization among multiple trading partners

5:00–6:00pm ET
Happy Hour

Become An Event Sponsor


Event Sponsor

Single Sponsorships

Gain visibility to Healthcare Supply Chain Collaborative conference participants with one of HIDA's single sponsorships:

Nightly Schedule of Events Email Sponsor - $1,500

Education Session Sponsor - $3,500

Happy Hour Sponsor - $3,500

Presenting Sponsors

Available for a maximum of six companies - $5,500

Includes:
  • Five minutes of uninterrupted time to demo/showcase your product or service to attendees during 30 minute technology partner session
  • Two full registrations
  • Exhibit booth with standalone exhibit time
  • Recognition in marketing, web, and branding


Download HIDA's Healthcare Supply Chain Collaborative Sponsorships PDF >>

Customized sponsorship packages are also available. To learn more, contact Julie Berry or Jackie Gil today.

Sponsorship Contact:

Julie Berry»
Director, Conferences & Sponsorship Sales
703-838-6103

Event Contact:

Kendall Lemmert, MHA»
Program Manager, Healthcare Supply Chain Collaborative
HIDA, 703-838-6138

The Health Industry Distributors Association (HIDA) is committed to a respectful and safe experience for all participants, regardless of race, ethnicity, color, national origin, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, age, religion, disability, and any other characteristic protected by applicable federal, state or local laws. HIDA does not tolerate discrimination, intolerance, harassment, or aggression at any HIDA event, either in person or via electronic communications. Any discriminatory, harassing, inappropriate, or aggressive behavior should be reported to an employee of HIDA or to the event staff immediately. Anyone engaged in inappropriate behavior is subject to removal from the event at HIDA’s discretion.