Catalyst Medical Group, with offices in Lewiston and Moscow, Idaho, is a full-service, locally physician-owned multi-specialty medical practice. The practice sets itself apart by providing value-based programs focused on improving the health of the community. Catalyst Medical Group provides the care patients need under one roof, including an in-house lab and radiology department, internal medicine department, family practice, as well as pediatrics, gynecology and obstetrics, podiatry, and dermatology care. The team also includes orthopedic surgeons specializing in spine, hand, sports medicine and orthopedic surgery.
THE CATALYST MEDICAL GROUP STORY
Goal: Greater Centralization
Several years ago, Rob Akhnoukh, Director of Facilities and Procurement, Catalyst Medical Group, chaired the committee that began the search for a solution to help improve the organization’s decentralized, manual ordering processes. “At the time, individual department nursing supervisors were managing their own ordering, and an improvement we wanted to make was to create more procurement centralization,” said Akhnoukh. “We wanted to allow the nursing staff to stay focused on nursing, and drive order entry and procurement functions to our internal purchasing agent. This would help move us from a very decentralized system of ordering to a very centralized – and much better organized – order management process.”
The organization was managing not only physically separate locations, but within the greater Catalyst organization, a vast range of service lines. “Our team covers services ranging from pediatrics, express care and family practice in one location, to foot and ankle surgery, orthopedics and radiology in another,” said Akhnoukh. “All these practices are under the Catalyst banner and all part of the Catalyst multi-specialty organization.”
The breadth of services propelled Akhnoukh and his team to identify a solution that would create more standardization, plus greater visibility and oversight of all purchasing.
A Flexible Solution
One of the main goals in selecting Envi was to centralize highly variable and manual ordering processes. Today they have created two separate instances of Envi, one to support the purchasing functions and integration to SIS – Surgical Information System software at their ASC (Ambulatory Surgery Center), and another that supports purchasing processes for two multi-specialty clinics, where Envi is integrated with Sage-Intacct.
“For the clinics, we’ve consolidated the ordering through a single purchasing agent,” said Akhnoukh. “The nurse supervisors submit requests to the purchasing agent, who creates orders in Envi, which are routed to me for approval. And while we don’t place orders for the ASC, we do oversee GPO, purchasing and vendor agreements, which the ASC team loads into Envi so they can easily order and benefit from corporate agreements.”
Using two instances of Envi provides the Catalyst team with the integration and flexibility they need to support different workflow and processes, while helping build cost efficiencies and oversight at the corporate level.
Creating Ongoing Savings
With Envi, the Catalyst organization has replaced many of their manual processes and intends to continue this path. “Previously everything was done manually – POs placed over the phone, by fax,” said Akhnoukh. “For medical supplies, each department would login to a vendor website and place their own orders. It was messy and decentralized.”
Today the group sees savings from on-contract purchasing, correct contract pricing, and identifying new tier prices. “With centralized data, we’re running more data-driven processes. Envi lets us see when we can move to the next tier. Reporting functionality lets me quickly report by manufacturers, see what products we’re using, how many we’re using. I audit that information with our GPO to make sure we’re paying the right prices on products and finding opportunities for leveraged buying. We’ve already saved substantially by having access to the data Envi provides.”
The organization also uses Envi to support their AP team, enabling 3-way price matching and sending PO transactions to Intacct. Catalyst took steps to set up vendor numbers, GL codes and GL strings to support price matching and automation for AP functions.
“We can allocate costs to departments by making these links. If we place orders correctly through Envi, it feeds information directly into our accounting system and then allocates those costs through GL strings to the relevant departments.”
For Catalyst, the two greatest benefits are the efficiencies in time Envi creates and making data-driven decisions in relation to procurement. “In today’s world, everything should be data-driven. If an organization is using Envi the way we’re using it – entering all orders into Envi, even those we have to go out of Envi to place – they’ll build accurate procurement data for more data-driven decisions.”
Envi Best Practice Highlights
- Consolidation of purchasing processes for greater
visibility to system-wide procurement - Reporting tools allow ongoing audit of contract
purchasing, pricing and tier opportunities - Renegotiation of vendor contracts and pricing
agreements, based on accurate data
Recommedations
For organizations looking to improve their overall supply chain, Akhnoukh recommends looking at all processes. “Investigate all the offerings Envi has. What we’ve been using has been so beneficial and has improved efficiencies so much – from a labor perspective, a cost perspective, a delivery perspective. Any way you look at it, Envi streamlines our processes. It’s why I love the product, plus it’s easy to learn and user friendly.”
