I began the second quarter of this year by reflecting on many of the important milestones that have shaped HealthTrust’s 25-year history. Of great significance are the relationships that have been built and nurtured through the trust and commitment from our esteemed membership, as well as those forged by contracting with thousands of best-in-class suppliers throughout the last quarter century.
A look back
There are essentially four key milestones where HealthTrust purposefully redefined value and made pivotal decisions to address the needs of a growing membership. These milestones include:
- Merger with Consorta—Probably the most impactful event in the last 25 years, this merger welcomed a number of faith-based organizations to the HealthTrust family. This enabled us to share what we learned from serving other providers, align on key deliverables and develop vehicles for collaboration among all provider types who share similar challenges.
- Scaling the model—We leveraged the successful HealthTrust model to deliver value to the non-acute market. Today, four of the five largest surgery center operators in the U.S.—as well as 50,000 physician practices—comprise our AdvantageTrust division, focused on meeting the unique needs of non-acute sites of care.
- Expansion of purchased services—We added a technology overlay, Valify, to a continually evolving and expanding portfolio of purchased services contracts, giving health systems access to robust analytics, power benchmarking and best-in-class pricing/terms/conditions across hundreds of categories. With $1 trillion of categorized nonlabor spend, we lead the market in technology, analytics and expertise in identifying savings across dozens of categories.
- Growth in capabilities—In 2019, we acquired ROi, which added manufacturing, distribution and private label offerings. Another important addition was a staffing component through HealthTrust Workforce Solutions. Both these lines of business proved extremely valuable in serving our membership during the pandemic, given the resulting global supply disruption issues, as well as the challenging labor market.
An eye toward the future
I’m excited about the next 25 years as we continue to leverage the committed model to preserve and strengthen healthcare’s most comprehensive portfolio. The HealthTrust model is unique, and our history proves that it delivers!
HealthTrust was born from innovation, and we will continue this tradition as the needs of our customers evolve.
Along with offering performance improvement opportunities through our Advisory Services and Special Ops team experts, we are leveraging enhanced analytics, data models and AI-powered partnerships to enable your clinically integrated supply chain to maximize value for your organization in the areas of:
- Price discrepancy and price accuracy; harmonizing ERP (enterprise resource planning) data for both members and suppliers
- Resiliency, through a partnership with Everstream
- Identifying alternative products to combat spend anomalies
As your trusted partner, we remain committed to pushing boundaries and pursuing excellence as we look to further enhance our partnerships over the coming years. I encourage you to speak with your HealthTrust Account Manager to make sure we are effectively helping you optimize your organization’s performance. In the meantime, cheers to the next 25 years!
Ed Jones
President/CEO, HealthTrust Performance Group
Publisher, The Source magazine
