Healthcare Manufacturers Achieve Milestone With GHX Fax-to-EDI Conversion Solution

LOUISVILLE, Colo., June 6, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- More than two million faxed orders from healthcare providers have been converted to electronic data interchange (EDI) or other electronic formats using G-Fax(SM), which can seamlessly deliver faxes to a medical-surgical supplier's enterprise resource planning (ERP) system for fulfillment, GHX announced. G-Faxcuts order processing costs, speeds order processing times and reduces errors while giving suppliers the ability to do business with providers who do not have the capability to submit electronic orders.

"Use of fax conversion tools helps enable healthcare suppliers to expand into and do business more efficiently in other countries and with more trading partners, regardless of how technically savvy their customers are," said Derek Smith, GHX executive vice president of Marketing and Product Management. "The healthcare supply chain is global, and tools such as G-Fax are helping the industry move toward standardization of processes on a global scale."

In Europe, most orders are still submitted via fax, according to GHX. Lack of automation, if not addressed, would continue to add unnecessary costs to order processing and fulfillment for both healthcare manufacturer and provider organizations. For a supplier who receives on average 2,500 faxes per month, processing these orders could cost approximately $25.00 per order, or $62,500 per month. Converting these faxes to electronic documents traditionally reduces processing time and costs by half, generating a savings of approximately $31,250 per month or $375,000 per year.

In 2008, Haemonetics Corporation, a global medical supplier, re-routed fax volume from all of its business segments to G-Fax. According to Brian Gardiner, vice president of North America Customer Support and Services for Haemonetics, this conversion has improved operational efficiency and reduced errors related to manual data entry.

"Working with GHX, we were able to shut off our customer service fax machines and switch over to the G-Fax application with no business disruptions whatsoever," said Gardiner. "Our biggest concern was that we would lose orders during the transition, but we didn't miss a single order thanks to the work of the GHX team. G-Fax has significantly decreased hand keying of orders, enabling our customer service personnel in both the U.S. and, more recently, in Europe to focus less on data management and more on customer care."

G-Fax uses a combination of optical scanning technology and data entry personnel to deliver fax orders directly into a supplier's ERP system an hour or less after receipt of a fax order. It is flexible enough to handle challenges such as faxes that are in multiple languages, hand written or of poor quality.

About GHX

Global Healthcare Exchange, LLC (GHX) makes healthcare more efficient by delivering software and services that enable both healthcare providers and suppliers to increase efficiency, lower costs and provide better patient care. With the largest footprint in healthcare supply chain management, GHX connects more than 80 percent of licensed hospital beds at U.S. hospitals, as well as providers in Canada and Europe, with the suppliers from which they purchase the majority of their medical-surgical supplies. GHX is transforming today's linear healthcare supply chain into the industry's only Healthcare Supply Cloud(SM), providing 360-degree visibility into areas affecting both clinical and financial performance. Working with GHX, organizations can improve business processes, automate supply chain systems and collaborate to solve the tough challenges facing healthcare today. GHX is owned by members of the healthcare industry, including Abbott Exchange, Inc.; AmerisourceBergen Corp.; Baxter Healthcare Corp.; B. Braun Medical Inc.; BD; Boston Scientific Corp.; Cardinal Health, Inc.; Covidien; C.R. Bard, Inc.; Thermo Fisher Scientific Inc.; GE Healthcare; HCA; Johnson & Johnson Health Care Systems Inc.; McKesson Corp.; Medtronic USA, Inc.; Owens & Minor; Premier, Inc.; Siemens; University HealthSystem Consortium; and VHA Inc.  For more information, visit www.ghx.com. Follow GHX on Twitter @GHX_LLC and on Facebook @GHX.

SOURCE GHX

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