Standards have been in use in the grocery industry since the early 1970s. As consumers, we experience the ease of use and data when we scan our own items at the grocery store. We also have the ability to ask a stock person if more products are in the back. That person then can scan a bar code to determine availability. I am certain that I am not the only health care supply chain professional who is frustrated that we do not have this capability in our facilities. But, times are changing. There are several organizations, providers, manufacturers, GPOs and distributors who are working together to test, then implement standards. GS1 US is the owner of the standards. It has formed a health care users group (HUG) to look at the various attributes of the participants to determine what tasks need to be accomplished to test and implement standards. AHRMM has been a partner with Coalition for Healthcare eStandards (CHeS), Department of Defense (DoD) and GS1 US in educating the health care industry about the standards. The alphabet soup of standards may be confusing, so I’ve included a few definitions to help you understand to what I am referring:
The global location number (GLN) identifies legal entities, trading partners and customer locations in electronic commerce activities. Several GPOs have committed to the implementation of the standards. The first step was to assign a GLN to all facilities and any ship-to addresses associated with each facility. Call your GPO and ask what your GLNs are and if they are correct.
The UNSPSC enables members of the health care supply chain to consistently classify products and services they buy and sell. It was the first product taxonomy available to the health care industry that is not part of a proprietary, commercial product or service. The United Nations Standard Products and Services Code (UNSPSC) is an efficient, accurate and flexible classification system to help achieve companywide visibility of spend analysis, enabling procurement to deliver on cost-effectiveness demands and allowing full exploitation of electronic commerce capabilities.
The global trade item number (GTIN) is the globally unique GS1 system identification number used for trade items, or products and services. Bar code scanning in U.S. health care facilities is still in its infancy. The majority of this scanning is at the loading dock and not at the bedside, point of care or pharmacy. To complicate the lack of automatic capturing of product information is the state of database development within a health care facility. There are few health care facilities with truly integrated systems of total inventory. Instead there are separate silos for product classes. The pharmaceutical system is separate from the medical-surgical system. This is compounded further as many of these systems were developed locally within a facility. Many alternative solutions have been developed by hospitals, suppliers and their solution suppliers to make the supply chain function.
The Global Data Synchronization Network (GDSN) consists of trading partners (suppliers and retailers), data pools (services that hold and process trading partner data) and the GS1 Global Registry (a worldwide directory to help the GDSN community locate data sources and manage ongoing synchronization relationships between trading partners).
Strategic Marketplace Initiative is comprised of supply chain executives with a combined purchasing power of 25 percent of the total health care spend and is working with its members to become early adopters. Several organizations are working with pilot studies to get more supply chain participants to adopt standards. Understanding what you are buying, for whom the product/device is used, how much you pay for the product and rebate tracking are pieces to this puzzle that will provide information to move the supply chain to the next level. The FDA recently has proposed legislation which has been signed by President Bush requiring all items to have a unique device identifier. This is a precursor to the bar code standards. If we as an industry do not determine what the standards should be, then the federal government will, and we don’t want that.
Jean Sargent is the director of supply chain management at University of Kentucky Healthcare, Lexington.
This article first appeared in the January 2008 issue of Materials Management in Health Care.
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