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Peachtree Orthopedics Wins Q1 2018 Best Practice Award!

by | Apr 13, 2018 | Best Practice Awards

Every quarter, Inventory Optimization Solutions (IOS) identifies and shares best practices from among our current users to help educate the healthcare community on supply chain automation, especially in the non-acute healthcare market.

Congratulations to Peachtree Orthopedics on being selected as the winner of the IOS Q1 2018 Best Practice Award. Peachtree Orthopedics has demonstrated exceptional capabilities in automating supply chain and related processes, with interfaces between the Envi solution and various systems within their organization.

The Peachtree Orthopedics Story

Taylor Richardson
ASC Operations Strategist
Peachtree Orthopedics has been serving the Atlanta population for over 60 years, providing a lifetime of care for patients and families. Our 34 expert physicians are fellowship trained, going beyond their general orthopedic training to specialize in a specific part of the body, leading to higher quality care, less pain, a shorter recovery and better outcomes.
  
Peachtree Orthopedics’ two outpatient surgery centers are using the Envi web-based supply chain solution from IOS.

  

Driving Greater Automation

We set objectives and identified system requirements needed to improve our supply chain and related processes, including:
  
  • Improving visibility across the full supply chain
  • Overcoming the paperwork and multiple touchpoints required by manual processes
  • Improving search functionality for purchase orders
  • Tracking implant documentation back to cases and patients
  • Automating invoicing and payment processes by interfacing with our Great Plains system
If software systems aren’t integrated, then there’s no efficiency – you have to get the data from one system into another and manual keying isn’t the answer. Our priority is patient care, not data entry. We needed Envi to tie to other systems to minimize data entry and let the data flow automatically. With three key systems across our supply chain, we needed to interface with Envi to reduce manual processes, increase accuracy and increase standardization.
 

Results

We set a goal to receive 90% of our invoices electronically. We leveraged Envi’s EDI engine to receive electronic invoices directly from vendors whenever possible. Then we used the preconfigured integration between Envi and IDS Solutions to turn paper invoices into electronic invoices, which move through the same EDI connection. With this approach, we’ve converted over 1200 paper invoices to electronic invoices since going live.

 

In addition, we’ve seen results in a number of other areas. For example, we’ve reduced the amount of time materials managers spend at computers, giving them time to ensure supplies are stocked and in turn reducing case delays due to stock-outs. We have transparency between central billing and surgery centers, and in fact, can search on a physician’s name and find all the implants affiliated with that doctor’s cases.

 

Before Envi, physical inventory counts were a manual process that took days to complete and now with Envi, we can use barcodes and scanners to complete inventory in a few hours. We’ve also improved internal benchmarking between both surgery centers. The first step was consolidating into one inventory database and today, we can see which center has which products at what cost, so we can standardize pricing across both centers’ purchase orders. Using Envi’s reporting functionality, we can present the doctors with spend data to decide where we can consolidate and standardize products. We have visibility to all products in use and information for better decisions.

 

We use Envi’s purchasing dashboard to track trends of spend by vendor, which has helped us establish certain contracts and rebate programs since we easily see spend with each vendor.

Summary of Best Practices

 

System Integration

Our goal was to integrate systems so data could flow seamlessly, and eliminate manual entry. We’ve successfully integrated Envi with two current systems (Great Plains and DeRoyal Continuum) and will be completing a third within the year. In addition, Envi is integrated with IDS, which allows us to receive a higher percentage of our invoices electronically, improving accuracy and driving faster processing.

 

Automating Manual

We’ve significantly expedited our AP processes. Data is seamlessly exchanged between our Great Plains system and Envi.  We’ve greatly reduced manual processing time, increased the number of invoices we process electronically, and benefit from automatic invoice validation, increased accuracy, and reduced late fees.

 

Centralization and Visibility

With Envi, we have a centralized place to track spend. We can see what each surgery center orders and at what price, and with this information, can go back to our vendors and negotiate better pricing tiers and ensure greater consistency.