Wednesday, June 23

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

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 – Introductions

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

Lauren Bradley
Sourcing Analyst
SCL Health

Rob Brandt
Senior Director, Sales Administration
Medline Industries

Nancy Ewing
Director, Supply Chain
SCL Health

Ryan Mearini
Executive Account Director, Acute Sales
Medline Industries

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
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.

1:50-2:05pm 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
Case Study: How Ansell Achieved Near-Perfect Customer & 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

3:50-4:15pm ET
Roundtable Discussions – What Have You Learned Or Improved During The COVID Chaos?

4:20-5:15pm ET
Virtual Game Night & Networking

Join a virtual team and engage in competition and connection during your very own happy hour game show.

Thursday, June 24

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

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
New Efficiencies From A New Standard! Introducing The GPO Admin Fee Reporting Toolkit

12:00-12:30pm ET
Roundtable Discussions – Best Practices For Collaborative Pricing Management

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

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

1:30-2:00pm ET
Technology Solutions Vendor Visits

Speak directly with technology vendors to learn more about their solutions for contract administration.

2:00–2:40pm ET
Case Study: Using Blockchain To Manage Contracts Between Healthcare Trading Partners

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

2:45-3:00pm ET
Roundtable Discussions – What Changes Are You Going To Adopt First?

3:00-3:30pm ET
Adoption: Moving The Industry Forward On Pricing Alignment