Drug Topics - January 28, 2008 - (Page H13) www.drugtopics.com JANUARY 28, 2008 DRUG TOPICS HSE 13 Business/Management This new service helps you recover lost supply chain dollars Judy Chi ow often has your pharHunt told Drug Topics that macy been overcharged Novation conducted a pilot of for drug purchases? Case its recovery program last July. in point: when a manufacturer The program was then rolled runs out of a product for whatevout to 130 hospitals of the Unier reason and you have to switch versity HealthSystem Consorto another drug at a substantially tium, which uses Novation as higher noncontract price. its contracting-services compaSuch invoicing errors happen ny. Expansion is continuing this all the time and could cost phar- Mick Hunt of Novation (l.) is helping year with VHA and Provista as macies a bundle. But recovering hospitals recover lost dollars in their well as the rest of Novation’s supply chain, a service that Brian these costs takes manpower that Romig of Moses Cone welcomes. 1,600 acute-care hospitals. many pharmacies don’t have. Hunt added that while other Now a new service from Novation can save pharmacies buying groups may also offer hospitals help with rethe hassle of recovering such costs on their own. covering lost supply chain dollars, not all of them do Since 2004 the group purchasing organization has it on a central basis or they may charge more than been providing member hospitals with a report of their what Novation is charging. To date, 825 members pricing discrepancies for multisource drug contracts so have joined Novation’s program. they can recoup lost dollars on their own. Now going To sign up for Novation’s service, members should one step further, Novation is centralizing the recovery of submit the enrollment agreement located in Form Manfailure-to-supply funds on behalf of its members. Ac- ager on the Marketplace Web site. To access Form Mancording to Novation’s VP of pharmacy Mick Hunt, this ager, click on the E-Commerce Services menu. For more will simplify the collection of these lost funds and re- information, you can send an e-mail to FTSRecovery@ move this administrative burden from members. In re- novationco.com or visit www.novationco.com. DT turn for its service, Novation will keep 10% of the dollars recovered and return 90% to participating members This pharmacy life in the form of a quarterly wholesaler credit or check. Brian Romig, pharmacy director at Moses Cone Health System, Greensboro, N.C., believes this Novation offering is a “very valuable service” and that the 10% fee is “modest.” A member of Novation’s advisory committee, Romig bases his assessment on his own pharmacy’s experience. His department has been collecting these supply chain funds individually with the help of a business analyst it hired. In one year, Moses Cone got back $300,000. Romig said the significant returns have helped him justify the hiring of his analyst, whom he uses for this function and other activities. Romig estimates that up to three-quarters of 1% of a pharmacy’s drug purchases could be recovered. For Moses Cone, which approaches $50 million in its drug budget every year, the savings can really add up. Romig believes that most hospitals don’t want to take it upon themselves to collect these funds. They prefer someone “This is a new digital medication. When a pill beeps once, take one. When a pill beeps twice, else to do it for them. Here’s where Novation comes in take two.” handy. H Illustration : Ron Ross http://www.drugtopics.com http://www.novationco.com
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