The PremierConnect® Integrated Contract Platform is the solution for displaying and working with contracts, item master file records, and contract items in one place.
Contract and product information is shared across Sourcing and Contract Management (SCM), Supply Chain Advisor (SCA), and the new Catalog.
With the integrated platform, eligibility to use local contracts can be assigned to multiple organizations ("facilities"), even if a site has more than one SCM installation.
Configuration and some conversion by a Premier Consultant is needed for SCM sites who wish to use the Integrated Platform.
Note: The Integrated Platform will not be available until after Release 7.0.
The Catalog contains data for a medical center's Premier-managed contracts, non-Premier ("local") contracts, and local item records.
In the Catalog, contract item data and data in the site's materials management item file is normalized against the Premier Item Master (PIM). The cleansing and normalization process resolves inconsistencies and duplicates, and allows the Catalog to include any other attributes from the PIM that may be missing from a site's existing records.
Products: In the Catalog, you can search for products, and filter the results to display both contracted products and items from your site's item master file. If an item is in the item master, the Catalog displays the item's identifier -- your local "Item Number" -- and other details. In this way, the Catalog greatly reduces contract and item file discrepancies and purchase order inconsistencies. Hospital staff gain efficiency in reviewing and purchasing products.
Contracts: You can search for and work with contract data from both SCM and SCA in the Catalog. Contracts, tiers and SCA price activation records are in the Catalog.
"About the Catalog" contains more information.
The integrated platform enhances the process of sharing local contracts among organizations. With the integrated platform, sites can designate organizations ("facilities") as eligible for a local contract. A contract can then be used by multiple facilities, including separate SCM installations at a medical center. This feature is convenient for large medical centers having several hospitals, each with its own independent SCM application.
While local contracts for most sites already follow date alignment as described below, enhancements to the data alignment conventions improve the way SCM works with other Premier cost-management applications, such as SCA and Supply Analytics (SA).
Tier Start/End dates and Item Price Start/End dates must be aligned with Effective Start/End dates for local contracts. This logic applies to both the local single-tier and multi-tier contract template uploads and to accepted, unaccepted, or activated local contracts. Premier-managed contracts are not affected.
Uploading new local contracts or accepting existing local contracts that violate any of the logic rules will result in error messages that prompt you to correct specific issues with dates.
The error message is: "Updates made to one or more Contract dates are not valid. Please refer to the help to learn about the Date Alignment Rules."
To avoid errors, Tier Start/End dates and Item Price Start/End dates must adhere to the following conventions:
Contract Dates
Tier Dates
Item Price Dates
Contract Extensions
Local Contract Data in Applications Such as Supply Analytics and GHX
SCA price activation of a local contract makes the contract's data available to Supply Analytics, GHX, and other applications that you may use.
Whether a site uses automatic SCA price activation is controlled by a system flag. If a site wants its data to be available to these other applications, SCA price activation is enabled. However, even your site is enabled, you can turn off SCA price activation for one or more tiers in a local contract at acceptance.
Table 1 is a summary.
Contract: Local or Premier | Action: | Performed by: | Sync Direction: | Outcome in Integrated Platform: | Benefits: | Notes: |
Local | Imported as new. | SCM user or automated import. | N/A | Contract appears in SCM. | Contract provides purchasing savings for the medical center. | |
Local | Acceptance in SCM. | SCM user.
|
N/A
|
Prices in contract are ready for activation in SCM. Assigning a facility group to the contract controls eligibility to use the contract. |
Data, including spend, is available to SCM analysis tools and Projects. Contract data is in the Integrated Platform Catalog. |
|
Integrated Platform | SCA | SCA price activation is automatically triggered. | System flag at site must be turned on for automatic SCA price activation. Users can then turn off SCA price activation as desired for individual contracts/tiers at acceptance. | |||
Local | SCA Price Activation (Flag at site must be set to allow.) |
Integrated Platform. | SCA | Contract appears in SCA. | Data is available to Supply Analytics, GHX, and other applications used at the site. | For new local contracts only. When changes apply to existing local contracts that are already accepted, users must do SCA price activation manually in SCA. |
Local | SCM Activation. | SCM user. | N/A | Contract prices are written to the site's MMIS master item file. | Staff at the medical center can purchase from the item master at the contract prices. | Medical center staff doing activation may need to resolve exceptions...item prices that do not activate because of data anomalies (UOM) or other reasons. |
Premier-managed | New contract entered in SCA. | Premier staff | N/A | Contract appears in SCA for further processing. | Pricing on the contract offers purchasing savings for Premier members. | |
Premier-managed | Acceptance in SCM. | Integrated Platform. | SCM | Contract appears in SCM as "accepted." | Data, including spend, is available to SCM analysis tools and Projects. | Contract data is in the Integrated Platform Catalog. |
Premier-managed | SCA Price Activation. | SCA user. | N/A | Manufacturer/contractor is notified that eligible facilities at a medical center wish to use the contract.
|
Data is available to Supply Analytics, GHX, and other applications used at the site. | |
Premier-managed | SCM Activation. | SCM user. | SCM | Contract prices are written to the site's MMIS master item file. | Staff at the medical center can purchase from the item master at the contract prices. |
Premier-managed contracts from SCA are brought into SCM (via the nightly process) as accepted.
Local contracts must be actively accepted in SCM at your site. The process of accepting a local contract in SCM writes the contract's data to the Catalog. At acceptance, the contract can also be automatically price activated in SCA so that its data are visible to Supply Analytics and GHX.
You can select and accept a single default tier for the local contract. You can also accept several, or all local contract tiers.
Important: You may wish to review the discussion of contract eligibility -- the facilities that can use the contract -- before accepting a local contract. By default, the core facility group established for your site is eligible for the contract, and you do not need to do anything before acceptance. However, you can change the eligible facilities, but you must do so before acceptance.
Should you need to revise price activations, because the contract or its eligibility has been changed, you need to work in SCA's Price Activation Module to manage the changes.
Here are the changes that require SCA price activation:
The words facilities and facility groups refer to organizations in a medical center. Eligibility opens a local contract to sharing among facilities (organizations), and prevents others from using, or even viewing the contract.
Facilities are assigned to pre-defined facility groups. Each contract has a facility group associated with it. The facility group contains the facilities at a medical center that are eligible to use and display the contract and its data.
For a new local contract, you can accept the contract in SCM -- all tiers -- using the default Core Facility Group as eligible for the contract. Alternately, for new local contracts, you can identify a different facility group other than the Core Facility Group (Figure 1) before you accept the contract. You can accept one, all, or several tiers on a local contract.
You can change the eligibility of existing local contracts that have been accepted in SCM. However, for existing, accepted local contracts, SCA price activation changes must be made in SCA.
If you accept the contract, and you decide later that you need to assign eligibility differently, you can go back to the Assign Eligibility panel and do so. The contract will still be accepted.
On the Assign Eligibility panel, two other actions are available (Figure 1):
Create Facility Group - Click this link to open the Facility feature. From the Facility feature, you can create a new facility group. After you create the new facility group, the Facility application returns to the SCM Assign Eligibility panel.
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Click Refresh and the new facility group is available from the drop list. You can select it for the contract.
View Facility Group - This link opens the PremierConnect Facility feature so that you can display the facilities belonging to the group that you selected, or to any facility group.
For local contracts, the Primary Contract Entity appears on the "Work with Contract" page Contract Info panel (Figure 3). The Primary Contract Entity is the manufacturer entity that SCM sends over to the Integrated Platform to associate with the contract. The Primary Contract Entity is defined by the application as the registered manufacturer represented most often on the contract item lines. Generally, the Primary Contract Entity is the same as the Entity that appears on the Contract Info panel.
For example, you may have a contract whose items belong to different manufacturer entities (suppliers). In this scenario, SCM alone would associate the contract with the multiple manufacturers. However, in the integrated platform with the Catalog, only a single manufacturer entity can be associated with the contract, so the Primary Contract Entity field allows for that.
For local contracts, the Primary Contract Entity can be edited as long as the contract has not been accepted.
The location of the Primary Contract Entity. Notice the Entity value right above it.
The Edit action is grayed out because this contract has been accepted. If it were not accepted, and you wished to change the Primary Contract Entity, you would click Edit.
You may have situations in which the manufacturer entity that is automatically assigned as the Primary Contract Entity should not be associated with the contract. So, you can edit the Primary Contract Entity to choose another manufacturer.
You activate both Premier-managed contracts and local contracts in SCM.
Instructions on activating contracts in the SCM environment are in the topic "Activate Supply Contract Prices and Resolve Exceptions in SCM." (This topic is available from within the SCM application. You can find it on the SCM documentation Search or in the Online Help menu.)
This section explains how ending tier activation for Premier-managed contracts in Supply Chain Analysis (SCA) affects contracts in Sourcing and Contract Management (SCM).
Date changes to historical price activations do not need to result in de-activating products. That is, if an existing SCA price activation is changed in SCA, the item/product dates that fall within the new price activation date window stay active. Tier start/end dates for managed contracts can only be changed in SCA.
Tier Prices Are Deactivated for a Contract in SCA in these circumstances:
When the current Default Tier expires, SCM continues to display the tier until a new tier activation message comes over from SCA. Inactive appears next to the tier on the the Tiers panel and on the Contract Info header panel next to the Default Tier (Figure 6).
When all the tiers on a managed contract expire, the contract cannot be activated from SCM. (No activate tabs are available.) The Deactivate panel displays the message that all tiers for the contract are expired (Figure 7).
Facilities Are Added/Removed from a Contract in SCA
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