At Meperia, we lean on 14,000 + hospital end users to help us understand the ever-changing U.S. healthcare supply chain. These hospitals and surgery centers leverage our data and requisitioning platforms. Our primary goals have always been to repair supply chain break points and help organizations improve patient safety. As we close out February, we have turned to those end users to ask: What are you most focused on in 2024?
Recalls: Hospitals can identify recalls before the purchase order is sent to the distributor or manufacturer. This prevents an organization from bringing the recalled product into stock. A nightly FDA feed is ideal, and hospitals need to know what’s on recall down to the lot and serial number. We help our end users by getting this information to them prior to requisitioning, so it resides within the virtual item master, and shows up again at the point of requisitioning. The focus is to proactively stop a buyer from ordering a recalled product in 2024 and it’s working. Recalls and patient safety still rank #1 in priorities.
Functional Equivalents: When supply chain professionals need to find an alternative product, when the sourcing team needs to understand every player in the market that makes a specific product, when value analysis needs to compare like products – Clinicians and Supply Chain professionals must have a source of unbiased information for clinical functional equivalents. From a tech perspective we strive to collect all the product data attributes we can. Some data providers limit the number of data attributes they collect. At Meperia, we collect unlimited attributes, and this is important because to provide clinical functional equivalents, a hospital must be able to see and compare all product attributes themselves. A clinician does need to know about the disposability, thread, outer diameter, functional use, procedural use, container…and data providers must go the distance. When a data provider limits product attributes, it limits its own learning and knowledge of the product. The more we know about a product, the more we can share with the hospital and the easier their day-to-day is when they are searching for information.
Bill Only: Automating the OR processes is still top of mind for the healthcare industry. Tracking this information down to the patient level and all the way through billing is key to a hospital’s financial success. It’s a vital part of their operation and hospitals that share the same platform with their bill only suppliers, understand that visibility is the name of this game. The Meperia team will be at #AHRMM24 this year. We will be sharing our journey to automate the bill only processes with a customer representative from Northside Health System in Atlanta, GA. They have been able to wrap this technology around their acute hospitals and non-acute surgery center locations. It’s a remarkable case study with clear hard dollar savings.
Claims Exceptions: This week, I spent some time with a customer one-year post go live. Our providers find tremendous value in periodic HCPCS and Revenue code reviews. The missing billing codes cost hospitals millions of dollars per year and as a data provider, we must review the data that equals hard dollar savings.
We are grateful at Meperia to have relationships in the industry and people to help us evolve and become more tactical as a data and technology provider. Many leaders have had three solid years of chasing back orders, constant executive turnover and/or they are managing the supply chain with outdated technologies. Yet still they persevere in support of the greater good. After 25 years of working in healthcare, I am still inspired by the good in people. There is no doubt a heavy presence of folks who want to make a difference and for that I am grateful to support them.
May we all take a moment in 2024 to listen to the customer, so that we can understand how to best contribute and support those who need it the most.
About the Author
Lee Ann McWhorter is the Vice President of Business Development at Meperia. Her primary goals are to reduce data error, reduce cost and improve patient safety in the healthcare industry. Lee Ann has worked with the founders of Meperia for over 16 years and understands the breakpoints in the healthcare supply chain and the need for unbiased, quality data moving forward. For more information about Meperia please reach out to lmcwhorter@meperia.com.