Master Data Management: Lifeblood of Healthy PPI Sourcing

Master data management (MDM) in healthcare involves creating and maintaining a central repository of accurate, consistent master data, including patient, provider and clinical utilization records. Master data management in the healthcare supply chain performs the same function.

Drilling further down within supply chain, MDM also is a critical part of physician preference item (PPI) sourcing. Healthcare supply chains must tap into deep data insights if they want to keep up with their PPI and medical devices and negotiate the best pricing. Now is not the time to let savings keep slipping away, contract after PPI contract.

MDM requires a single master record for each medical device, compiled from internal and external data sources and applications. The information must be de-duplicated, reconciled and enriched to be a consistent, reliable source of knowledge for other uses.

How MDM Serves the Healthcare Supply Chain

Effective MDM in the healthcare supply chain improves data quality and interoperability, and supports decision making and operational efficiency.

MDM seeks accurate medical device matching and identification, which reduces errors and duplicate records, and enhances contract benefits. It helps overcome data silos by integrating data from various systems, departments, and sources into a single, cohesive view.

MDM supports data integrity by:

• Establishing data standards
• Defining data models
• Implementing data validation and cleansing processes

Successful MDM initiatives in healthcare have been shown to streamline data reporting and support data-driven research and analytics. With well-managed, enhanced data for benchmarks, scenarios and other applications, supply chain teams see opportunities they would never have seen before.

PPI Sourcing Problem – Data Dives Are Hard

Managing complex PPI data proves a constant challenge for healthcare organizations (HCOs) that need the information for contract negotiations. Problems stem from:

• Lack of data management and grooming experts
• Lack of sources for certain data
• Lack of single source of truth

Working with PPI data gets tough and messy. Inaccurate or missing information negatively impacts HCO financial processes and PPI contract outcomes.

Medical Device Data – Too Much of a Good Thing?

Has data become too much of a good thing? Have we reached a point where it is impossible to process all that data in a timely fashion, if at all? We can’t ignore the elephant in the room – big data is only getting bigger. With mountains of data to sort through, MDM in the healthcare supply chain is easier said than done.

The more records that are brought in, the more that require exception handling to correct core data issues. This is a problem throughout healthcare. In fact, about 80 to 90% of medical data remains unstructured and untapped after it is generated.

The question becomes, what can be done about data overload in PPI spend and clinical spend? How do we productively use and share data to support decision-making? Accumulating data isn’t enough — don’t you want to act on it?

MDM Not Core Business of Healthcare Supply Chain

Creating a data-driven sourcing environment isn’t the core business of the healthcare supply chain, which lacks skilled resources to optimize processes. If supply chains don’t align data infrastructure to meet objectives like PPI sourcing, programs will stumble.

Like the steady stream of PPI contracting projects, MDM is not a one-and-done task. It requires ongoing commitment that many health systems can’t sustain. Data insights are too hard to access with existing tools and time.

This is one reason for the rise of managed sourcing services to consult and quickly leverage MDM technology to drive more PPI contracting events. Robust technology solutions include data integration tools, data quality software, and master data management platforms.

Trending Toward DaaS and Other PPI Sourcing Solutions

DaaS subscriptions and other clinical spend data management solutions empower HCOs to collect and consolidate valuable data. Some healthcare systems use a spend management platform like the Curvo Platform as their strategic sourcing infrastructure.

Smart analytics turn up the signal and turn down noise around pricing and contracts. Artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) are also being integrated into MDM tools to automate data management processes and improve data accuracy at scale.

Sustainable supply chain solutions like these start at the “molecular” level in clinical and PPI data. Master data management remains key to tapping margin relief from complex medical device data and contracts.

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