Forrest General Hospital Drives Greater Process Efficiency and Compliance through Contract Management Centralization

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1 Case Case Study Forrest General Hospital Drives Greater Process Efficiency and Compliance through Contract Management Centralization Organization Forrest General Hospital Hattiesburg, Mississippi GHX Products & Services GHX Contract Manager Highlights Forrest General Hospital centralized and standardized its approval and management process for all contracts through the GHX Contract Manager solution, driving greater process efficiency, gaining greater visibility into and control over its vendors and contracts, and enhancing compliance with patient privacy regulations. With implementation of the new contract evaluation module, Forrest General Hospital has enhanced its ability to comply with DNV GL accreditation requirements around annual vendor contract evaluations Overview Since 1952, Forrest General Hospital has been a leader in medical excellence in south Mississippi. The hospital has grown from the original 90-bed facility into a 512-bed, Level II Regional Trauma Center. Based in Hattiesburg, Mississippi, it provides regional health services to a 19-county service area. Forrest General is the flagship hospital for Forrest Health, a partnership of healthcare organizations formed to increase access to quality health care in south Mississippi. 1

2 Challenges Terri McNeil, contract administrator, Forrest General Hospital, is responsible for managing contracts for not only Forrest General, but across four other facilities within Forrest Health. Approximately 1,500 contracts come to McNeil for processing. They include contracts for supplies and services (GPO, non-gpo), physician agreements and patient transfer agreements. She oversees a review team comprised of legal, compliance, information technology (IT), supply chain and finance stakeholders, who all take an active role in evaluating these contracts. McNeil needed a centralized solution to electronically manage contracts, including the review process, in an efficient and effective manner. This includes tracking key dates and commitments, managing contract level data (e.g. insurance, rebates, commitment dollars, minority utilization) and monitoring vendors for contract compliance in accordance with DNV GL accreditation requirements. We needed technology that would enable us to manage all of our contracts in a single system, not just those that are vendor driven, said McNeil. But we also wanted the value of having credentialing and other information tied to our vendor contracts. Solution In June 2014, Forrest General Hospital implemented the GHX Contract Manager solution, which simplifies contract management with a single online portal. The solution helps healthcare organizations solve the challenges of contracting, including vendor validation, managing negotiations and document workflow, access and storage of contracts and associated documents, and ongoing contract management and monitoring. It facilitates collaboration with business partners during the contracting process, and manages and monitors the contract terms for greater data integrity and internal controls. Contract Manager is part of the GHX Contracting Lifecycle service, which provides integrated solutions for sourcing, vendor on-boarding and management, and company and representative credentialing. At the time of implementation, GHX worked with McNeil and her team to configure the solution to the needs of all key stakeholders. 2

3 The implementation team worked very closely with me on helpful hints and ways to set up the solution so that it was most effective for our internal processes, said McNeil. Each stakeholder to a contract comes from a different perspective, so by working with GHX to customize the solution, we can be assured that each individual is accessing the information they need to meet their compliance requirements. Gain access and visibility The Contract Manager portal allows users to access a variety of supplemental information to help manage contracts. At Forrest General, a user can click on the Vendor tab to view details about companies, including whether or not they are credentialed. In addition to viewing our contracts, I can go into the system and see that our vendors are registered and credentialed it gives us one system for everything, said McNeil. Under the Details tab, users can access the parties primarily responsible for a contract and the contract start and expiration dates. Within Clauses, they can view key contract conditions, such as confidentiality. Under Contract Documents, they can access all contract attachments, addendums and amendments. All that information is right there at the touch, said McNeil. Each stakeholder can go into the solution and do their part to manage the contract. As administrator, I control user viewing permissions it s not open for anyone to access. It s important to have visibility to a contract across an organization but we still need to keep our contracts secure. Streamline contract management and approvals With GHX Contract Manager, McNeil has centralized all contracts in a single solution and implemented a customized workflow that automates the approval process. Each stakeholder to a contract can log into the solution to conduct his/her review, and leave McNeil a note if he/ she has a question or concern. Once all stakeholders have reviewed a contract, the solution automatically sends McNeil an alerting her to the status so that she can review and address the comments. 3

4 It allows all departments the benefit of working together through one system, said McNeil. The contract business owners can track the entire lifecycle of their contracts. For supply chain, where managing costs is important, users can view contracts by supplier category to drive vendor consolidation and diversity spend. Having this information available to individuals throughout our organization helps us effectively manage vendors and contracts overall. Boost compliance and mitigate risk Forrest General Hospital is DNV GL-accredited and required to evaluate all of its contracts annually for vendor compliance. Managing vendor compliance can be very time consuming, particularly as the volume of vendors increases. With 1,500 contracts to manage across five facilities, this is no small task for McNeil. In October 2015, Forrest General Hospital began using the latest GHX Contract Lifecycle enhancement, the Contract Manager contract evaluation module. With it, the organization has automated and increased the efficiency of its evaluations of vendors and contracting for accreditation purposes. Within the module, McNeil created vendor contract evaluations with customized forms, questions and scorecards, assigned evaluators (approximately 90 contract business owners), and configured the dates and notifications for the 30-day evaluation period. She then reached out to the evaluators asking them to complete the process for 1,226 contracts. Each evaluator had the ability to log into the module to access the contracts, scorecards and information about the vendors from contact information to contract data. When completing an evaluation in the module, the business owner noted whether or not each vendor requirement was met. If a requirement was not met, the system indicated that remediation was required and triggered the remediation plan required by the DNV GL. The business owner then had the opportunity to type in a remediation plan, as well as upload documents, including s to and from vendors. During the evaluation period, McNeil used the module to run configurable reports that provided visibility into evaluation status, scorecards completed by internal team members, vendor 4

5 information and contract scores. She ran weekly reports to get status updates and manage the evaluation process. At the conclusion of the 30-day period, the business owners had completed all 1,200+ contract evaluations. McNeil comments on the value of reporting for accreditation. She notes that if DNV GL identifies specific contracts for review, she can use the GHX solution to quickly access and download these contracts along with their corresponding evaluations. We were able to design and set up our own evaluations to meet our unique process and needs, said McNeil. This was important for us in meeting DNV GL requirements, and annually storing and evaluating all of our contracts. The evaluation module tool allows us to do this in an efficient and effective manner. Results Working with GHX, Forrest General Hospital has achieved the following: Centralized contract management for all contracts (vendor, physician agreements, patient transfer agreements) with a single online portal Streamlined contract approval and management processes Gained greater visibility into vendor population Completed 1,200+ contract evaluations by 90+ business owners to help meet DNV GL accreditation requirements About GHX GHX offers a complete solution for vendor sourcing, management and contracting that leverages our network of 68,000 credentialed vendors, representing virtually every category of spend. With access to this vast network of better vendor data and integrated solutions, providers are positioned to streamline every stage of the contracting lifecycle, as well as make decisions that better support supply chain and compliance goals W Century Drive, Suite 100 Louisville, CO USA YOUR.GHX 10 Carlson Court Suite 701 Etobicoke, ON M9W 6L Global Healthcare Exchange, LLC. All rights reserved. GHX is a trademark of Global Healthcare Exchange, LLC