By: Sandi Michel, MPM, ITIL, LSSBB
FMOLHS Director of The Office of Data Standards & Interoperability
When FMOLHS chose a partner for our first pilot implementing GS1 US Data Standards, we immediately thought of Cook Medical. The Cook Medical journey to adopting GS1 US Data Standards began in 1999 and continuously progressed for over a decade. Since 2012, Cook Medical has published attributes to the GDSN and for quite some time, had been ready for transacting with Providers using GTINs. With the Cook Medical single customer interface, it made it possible for FMOLHS to look to the future end state where we would have access to the GDSN and could complete these seamless tractions with real time updates.
In February of 2014, FMOLHS gathered a large team of manufacturers, technology partners, advisory organizations, regulatory bodies, and other healthcare systems together to enhance and complete the draft documents developed prior to the kick-off meeting. We used PMI and Lean Six Sigma Methodologies to remain organized and on track as we continued to build these tools.
We selected 7 progressive manufacturers who had the insight and wherewithal to comply with regulatory requirements and implement GS1 US Data Standards within their companies and had GTINs assigned to all of their products. We selected 1 manufacturer as our first pilot test for our program; Cook Medical was ready and willing to work with us throughout the entire process.
Cook Medical was present and proactive before, during and after our kick-off meeting, helping and guiding FMOLHS with every step of the way to identify our technical needs, to capture and use GLNs and GTINs to transact using EDI within Supply Chain, and to do what had never been done before, to build the Master Project Plan, Master Network Diagram, and Master Process Document for all US Healthcare Providers to use.
We cleansed our data; we traded GLN information and set up both company’s GLNs in our ERP systems to transact using EDI. We received GTINs from Cook Medical and uploaded them into our Lawson ERP System. We wrote processes to remove manual steps from our buyer’s daily routine to review and manually release purchase orders. Since the GTIN came directly from Cook Medical and was uploaded in our ERP, we removed the chance for data matching errors.
The purchase orders were automatically released to Cook Medical for fulfillment. The requestor received the product from inventory. The ASN contained the data needed for scanning upon delivery. Inventory was replenished. The invoice was matched and released for automatic payment. The payment was sent to Cook Medical automatically. We tested and documented every step, every process, every system change and every lesson learned. The lessons learned from out FMOLHS-Cook Medical Pilot were used as we launched each of the remaining 6 pilots. Together we built a sound foundation for implementing GS1 US Data Standards to serve our own new Central Distribution Center soon to open in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.
The work Cook Medical and FMOLHS have done has been shared across the US Healthcare Industry to help other Healthcare Providers launch their GS1 US Data Standards projects within their organizations.
Starting a data standards conversation within your organization can be daunting. And having the Unique Device Identification (UDI) regulation creating a sense of urgency around using data standards to identify products can be both a blessing and a curse. On the one hand, the fact of the matter is that every healthcare organization will have to eventually use data standards, even minimally, to meet the regulatory requirement. However, simply checking the regulatory box isn’t necessary the best reason to adopt data standards. If an organization wants to get true value out of using data standards, they’ll need to do a lot more up front to get there.
Karen Conway, executive director for Industry Relations at Global Healthcare Exchange, talked to us last year after a UDI workshop we held at the IDN summit. She had some good advice for anyone who wants to start having (or re-energize) the conversation around UDI and data standards adoption in their organization. Watch what she has to say below:
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Adopting data standards can bring a lot more value to a health system than just meeting a regulatory requirement. Learn more at barcode.cookmedical.com.
We’ve been talking a lot about data standards. Last year, Cook proudly announced that we were among the first companies to adopt GS1 data standards by applying Global Trade Item Numbers (GTINs) to all of our products. We were also honored to be recognized for that effort earlier this year. Clearly, we’re invested in this issue, but would you believe that the process to adopt a global data standard started all the way back in 2000?
Fourteen years ago, our IT systems were getting in the way of our ability to do business efficiently. Our company was growing quickly and with each new manufacturing plant or distribution center came a new IT system and business process. The different systems didn’t speak the same language, so it became difficult to coordinate how our products moved around the world. And, we knew that if we were having trouble internally, that it had to be affecting our customers and, most importantly, their patients.
We decided to make a change in order to improve patient care. In 2000, when we started this process, we had 376,000 unique product numbers. That translates to 376,000 labels, 376,000 IFUs, and 376,000 marketing pieces. In reality, all those numbers represented only about 20,000 unique products. It took many years, but we streamlined our internal systems, cleaned up our data, and applied the GS1 global standard to all of our products.
Ensuring that products can be easily tracked from our warehouses to the patient’s bedside is crucial to preventing clinical and administrative errors. Too often, expired or recalled products are used on patients because healthcare simply doesn’t have a way of managing product data as it moves through the healthcare system. These are the very real problems that adopting data standards will help solve.
Regulatory agencies around the world are looking seriously at how best to use data standards to improve patient safety and reduce the overall cost of healthcare, an effort which we applaud and support. We know from experience that making a commitment to adopt data standards globally can bring valuable benefits to all members of the healthcare system.
“It’s a journey. It’s constantly changing, it’s constantly moving,” said Chuck Franz, our chief information officer. “We should all be in the room for the same reason: to improve patient safety. And along the way, we can cut healthcare costs. We can improve the supply chain.”
Fully adopting data standards has been a long journey for us. Adopting data standards across entire healthcare systems will be an even longer one. But we think it’s a worthy goal, with valuable benefits for patients and the supply chain. We’re in for the long haul.
Gartner is a prestigious information technology research and advisory company and they periodically recognize companies who are making strides in innovating supply chain. Also humbling is the fact that this is the first year that the Chainnovators award is being presented to an organization in the healthcare industry.
We’re proud of the work that led us to be recognized in this way. We have spent the past couple of years developing solutions to help streamline the healthcare supply chain. One of our successes was meeting the industry-agreed date of January 1, 2013 for labeling all of our devices with a GTIN barcode. This data standard, when used across the supply chain, will help solve the problems that arise naturally when data in different systems are not in the same [format] language.
We’ve also formed our Supply Chain Improvement team, who are dedicated solely to working with customers around the globe to develop and implement tools to improve purchasing, delivery and inventory management activities. Our goal has been and remains to be delivering the highest quality product to the patient in need in an efficient and sustainable way.
Thank you, Gartner, for your recognition of this work. All of us at Cook are honored.