Providence Alaska Medical Center purchases documents such as admittance packets, insurance forms, booklets, annual reports, promotional materials, flow sheets and more. The Anchorage, Alaska-based division of Providence Health System uses 1- to 5-part carbonless forms, unit sets and a few continuous forms. Jim Viges, the medical center's supply chain manager, handles print purchasing for its headquarters, a facility in Seward, Alaska, two long-term care units and various clinics. His goal: centralize print purchasing.
Providence Alaska Medical Center used to print and mail most of its products from its in-house print services department. Four years ago, the medical center re-evaluated its approach. "Printing and mailing weren't included in what we thought was our core businesses, which is serving our patients," Viges says. The company selected a third-party mail house, and invited printing providers to bid on its work.
Dayton, Ohio-based manufacturer Standard Register (SR) offered an arrangement that impressed the medical center: SR would buy and keep Providence's printing equipment in house, hire the medical center's print employees, and add a part-time SR representative with a design background and more than 20 years of medical industry experience. SR already had an agreement with Providence Health System's group purchasing organization (GPO). "It was probably the most painless outsourcing agreement I've ever entered," Viges says.
Hospitals and other health care facilities belong to buying groups mainly for discounts on frequently used equipment and supplies. SR has forms management contracts with several major GPOs, including San Diego-based Premier Inc. ($14.8 billion in annual purchasing volume), Brentwood, Tenn.-based HealthTrust Purchasing Group ($4.5 billion) and Rolling Meadows, Ill.-based Consorta Inc. ($2.7 billion).
Viges says having an SR rep working at the medical center is key. "She is set up on our email system so she's kind of like a regular employee," he says. "It's really the only way we could make the system work. Our staff, particularly in the hospital, are used to that hands-on, touchy-feely, I-want-to-make-sure-my-form-looks-right kind of stuff." Viges says he also appreciates SR's ability to turn forms around in 48 hours.
The medical center previously had problems getting forms delivered to proper locations, Viges says. The SR rep ensures the forms move from the print services department, through SR and its partner vendors, and back to appropriate departments. "That is a value added for us," Viges says.
The SR rep also helps the medical center comply with the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA) and the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations (JCAHO). (For details, visit http://cms.hhs.gov and www.jcaho.org.) The SR rep attends the medical center's documentation committee meetings, contributing to design from the start. Each of the hospital's departments has its own manual of relevant JCAHO policies, as well as intranet access to company-wide policies.
The medical center sends approximately 300 annual reports to doctors and laboratories, encouraging them to use its testing services. Originally, the firm relied on an offset printer in Anchorage to produce the 200-page reports. But SR redesigned them three years ago, producing offset shells that can be variably printed with additional information and mailed in two days. The medical center saved up to 60 percent on the job, Viges says.
Frank Miller, an account director at SR, works closely with Viges. He says future challenges for the medical center include using new print technologies and increasing the number of forms available online. Also, Miller and Viges say the medical center's print and information services departments will aim for branding consistency. Currently, many departments design their own forms. (Viges calls them "rogue forms.")
Viges says he'd like to convince third-party insurance and billing entities to allow universal branding on their documents. "Let's say you're going into the hospital for a procedure," Viges says. "Depending on the type of procedure, currently you could see four or five different billing information packages from our hospital, and two or three of them could have different logos on them. I think it really confuses the customer as far as who they're paying and who Providence is."
Like many health care providers facing changing regulations and insurance policies, Viges sees more paper-based forms in his future. "Everybody talks about a formless society," he says. "I can't imagine not having paper in the hospital environment right now."
--Rita Tiefert
Competing Against the Majors
