MHS Releases Point-of-Use Bill-Only Item Application

Newest addition to MHS' Total Solutions provides hospitals with more control over billing, utilization and tracking

Management Health Solutions ("MHS"), a premiere, independent provider of supply chain optimization solutions for hospitals and healthcare systems nationwide, today announced the launch of its latest application, Point-of-Use Bill-Only item software. This product is the newest addition to MHS' suite of software modules, an end-to-end suite that provide hospitals with automation and optimization tools necessary to meet their clinical supply chain needs.

Bill Only is a software application designed as an add-on to its Point-of-Use clinical module, which seamlessly integrates with any Material Management Information System. Created to help hospitals manage the very complex, high-value area of bill-only items, vendor-managed inventory and samples, the Bill-Only feature automates manual processes and creates more visibility. Items such as orthopedic implants, spinal instrumentation and specialty cardiology are difficult to manage in a hospital's master item file because the catalog for each manufacturer can be extensive, which is why hospitals typically use a manual process when documenting utilization and creating purchase orders. However, with any manual process, errors are more likely to occur and it is difficult to track product use.

By using the Bill-Only add-on, these clinical items can be referenced against the MHS proprietary database that houses more than 1 million unique items. Once an item is matched, its utilization can be tracked, reported and analyzed; while item recalls are addressed automatically. Customers using the Bill-Only software are added to an alert database, and any hospital with a recalled item in its inventory is notified immediately. If the item doesn't exist in the inventory at the time of the notification, MHS will send an alert should the customer receive a product with a lot/serial number that matches the recalled item.

"Bill-only items typically fall outside hospitals' regular purchasing and accounting procedures which leads to manual tracking by hospital staff," said Mike Ferris, MHS Co-Founder & EVP of Operations. "To ensure these purchases comply with a hospital's management, auditing and recall procedures, they need to be automated and linked to the inventory process for common hospital items. Our Point-of-Use Bill-Only item application leverages all the functionality of our mobile supply chain software solutions and enables hospitals to extend control and automation to bill-only items enabling hospitals to better track usage, conduct product recalls and improve the bottom line."

"With the Bill-Only enhancement added to our Point-of-Use solution platform, we are closing another loop in the supply chain process which can be disjointed," said Kishore Bala, VP of Technology Strategy & Development at MHS. "We have designed this enhancement in partnership with our customers to offer a workflow process that will capture utilization, provide visibility and automate manual tasks inherent in bill-only transactions."