Streamline your healthcare supply chain with Prodigo Solutions’ cutting-edge data-based solutions

The supply chain is generally defined as a resource that is required to deliver goods or services to a customer. Supply chain management in healthcare is sophisticated and fragmented because it involves obtaining resources, delivering goods, and managing the flow of supplies from the manufacturing source to patients of the providers. In healthcare, patients are the consumers, and the products that are delivered to them are numerous, time sensitive and in some cases require special handling. All which impact the cost and sourcing of goods and services. The basic principle of the healthcare supply chain is that it is not based only on supply and demand triggers. Some medical products cannot be stocked like any other traditional products because the consumers’ requirements vary and pricing is contextual to its clinical use. These unique challenges are driving the change in supply chain management in healthcare.

Prodigo Solutions is a healthcare technology company that improves provider’s financial control and reduces supply chain costs. Prodigo Solutions’ spend management platform has been developed by healthcare supply chain experts to deliver tangible results across a continuum of care. Counting more than half of the nation’s most prestigious health systems as clients, Prodigo has amassed one of the largest repositories of supply and services market data in the U.S. Its data management platform resolves longstanding data and price maintenance problems, while its spend platform enforces product and services standards, drives contract utilization and enhances the requisitioning experience of clinicians. Typically deployed as a performance-extension to ERP, Prodigo is foundational to value-based, clinically integrated supply chains.

Prodigo Solutions was founded in 2008, and it is based in Cranberry Township, Pennsylvania.

In conversation with Joseph Mayernik, Executive Chairman and President of Prodigo Solutions

Q. What motivated you to design a dedicated platform for healthcare providers that control the cost of finance and supply chain?

Based on our IDN (Healthcare Provider) origins, it was clear that Healthcare Providers struggled to “operationalize” varying contract terms and contract structures (e.g., technology carve-outs, volume commitments, capitated pricing) across their large, complex continuums of care. In addition to the complexity of contract terms, there is also the tremendous volume of items purchased in healthcare – much more than other industry verticals – each having multiple prices and/or sourcing paths based on usage. As a result, most providers average 60% compliance and utilization rates at best. Prodigo Solutions was formed to combat this challenge and, like the conductor of an orchestra, drive requestors from multiple clinical disciplines across large geographical footprints in a seamless, cohesive manner to the right items, from the right sources, at the right (contracted) price to enable the right outcomes. Additionally, Prodigo extends the value of data to drive right decisions through its Data Hub which ensures that healthcare professionals understood what was being ordered, by improving the accuracy and completeness of attributes in that item formulary (e.g., Product Alerts, Voluntary Recalls, Involuntary Recalls, GTIN, HCPSC, packaging strings, etc.).

Q. A challenge that healthcare providers face is the hidden costs of every product. Is Prodigo a solution for this challenge?

Prodigo is a solution to this costly issue for hospitals. With Prodigo’s Contract Navigator and Marketplace, Prodigo ensures hospitals are receiving the right item, from the right source, at the right price. With a contract repository for managing prices across all GPO and local contracts, Contract Navigator directs purchasing activity to the preferred, contracted source and enforces price accuracy to improve compliance. Contract Navigator improves visibility into negotiated price incentives such as admin fees and rebates in order to maximize savings. Once contracts are loaded into the platform, prices are managed through the lifecycle of the contract. Prodigo’s Marketplace provides users with a simple, easy to use ordering platform that directs search and purchasing activity to the preferred sources at the right price. Marketplace centralizes the entire buying process, it controls the entire health system spend footprint to increase savings, and integrates seamlessly with the financial system of record.

Q. Tell us in brief about your solution.

Driving Compliance is a two-fold proposition. Firstly, Prodigo is a spend management technology that controls the front-end of the procurement process. Secondly, Prodigo provides complete and accurate data that informs the purchase decision to deliver preferred outcomes. Prodigo has solutions for every health system.

Our Marketplace spend platform is a leader in managing the supply chain purchasing process. With a modern web-based e-commerce interface, users can quickly be directed to order the items they need so they limit administrative burden and can focus more time on critical patient care.

Our Data Services collects, packages and disseminates digital information to customer environments and downstream systems and processes. Services include Item Master Enrichment for item attributes, images and documents [GTIN, identifiers, descriptions, UNSPSC, HCSPCS, item indicators, images, instructions for use, MSDS] on over 4 million of the common items used in healthcare. As well as, Description Cleansing which provides standardized item descriptions and abbreviation rules.

• Prodigo continuously partners with manufacturers to acquire new and/or better item images, item identifiers, descriptions, classification and attributes
• Integrates seamlessly to other 3rd party ERP systems

Data Hub is an integral component of master data management and data quality initiatives; providing a modern cloud-infrastructure purpose-built to overcome healthcare’s data conundrum.

• The ‘engine’ that incorporates item enrichment and item standardization, as well as Price Management [Contract Navigator] into the Virtual Item Master for master data management
• Prodigo functions as a data platform that includes automated data harmonization, system integration and data transformation

Our Analytics platform consolidates all supply chain activity to monitor KPIs, evaluate compliance, operational performance and savings.

PRODIGO’S ADVANTAGE

• Prodigo provides a single platform for managing spend and master data that is integrated and complementary to the ERP system functionality
• As one of healthcare’s largest data aggregators, Prodigo manages an image repository with over 4.1M item images
• Prodigo provides data enrichment and cleansing workflow; combining item descriptions, clinical attributes, identifiers [Item ID, GTIN], indicators, UNSPSC, HCPCS, images, documents with description standardization rules
• Prodigo’s Item Master/File Enrichment service is a data service provided to enhance the value and accuracy of the item master or data file to ensure full attribution of data sets and accurate identification of items to optimize supply chain operations
• Prodigo provides full interoperability of contracts; enabling data to be captured, managed, shared, transacted and analyzed; giving users a virtual representation of a single source of truth

Q. How do you market your services?

Our Sales and Marketing departments have a diverse strategy that targets industry leading health systems in need of our services explicitly. Patient care is every hospital’s priority, and, especially now, their attention is on the patient’s safety, health, and recovery. Hospitals need to source the right items to take care of those patients at the lowest cost, especially during these restrictive COVID-19 times. With intense market and demographic research, we create solutions that meet the needs of hospitals all over the United States so hospitals can take less time finding the right solution and spend more time on patient care.

Q. Do you have any new services ready to be launched?

Bill Only is an embedded workflow in Prodigo’s Marketplace, helping health systems solve the complex problem of bill-only item identification, documentation and costing during a patient’s clinical procedure.

Benefits of Bill Only:

• Prodigo’s Bill Only eliminates the burden of entering bill-only requisitions from staff; barcode scanning and ERP integration streamline this process, re-prioritizing focus to patient care, increasing overall efficiency
• Both clinicians and suppliers have access to approved item formularies with accurate pricing at the point of care; reducing clinical variation, eliminating exceptions and limiting case approvals
• Capturing items at the point of care closes the audit gap and allows supply chain management and finance teams to review case costs throughout the procurement lifecycle

Meet the leader behind the success of Prodigo Solutions

Joseph Mayernik is the Executive Chairman and President of Prodigo Solutions. Joe has over 40 years of business experience with the last 10 years as Founder, Chairman/CEO of Healthcare Waste Solutions (“HWS”). Prior to founding HWS, Mr. Mayernik was the founder and CEO of Human Resource Services an organizational restructuring firm specializing in the healthcare and waste industry providing services such as analysis of strategic and business plans, forecasts and assessments of key executive personnel. Mr. Mayernik started his business career in 1970 with Falcon Industries, a conglomerate of diverse businesses in the manufacturing and service industries and rose to the position of Executive Vice President.

“At Prodigo, we are building Healthcare’s Marketplace leveraging the power of community intelligence to transform healthcare supply chain and reduce the total cost of care.”