Product Identification: Product Data
Utility
Overview
The current facts about PDU:
• Hospital item masters are constantly
being updated. Thirty percent of buyer systems are
inaccurate.
• Every single day the health care
supply chain wastes 24-30% of supply administration time
on data cleaning and
corrections, costing the health care industry billions of
dollars.
• Buyers are sourcing products from
old information.
• $2 to $5 billion are lost each year
due to supply chain information inefficiencies.
• Each erroneous transaction costs
$60-$80 to correct.
• 60% of all invoices generated have
errors; each invoice error costs $40-$400 to reconcile.
• Erroneous data increases supply
costs 3%-5%.
• Hospitals, GPOS and suppliers
already spend in excess of $5 million dollars annually to
synchronize product
information—often against non-authoritative sources.
In a PDU, manufacturers contribute clean,
classified product information to the utility where it is
verified and published for all subscribers to access. A health
care PDU would provide a central industry resource for
standardized product data from manufacturers and distributors
and enable all participants to synchronize and maintain
accurate item files in near-real time from the manufacturers
through the supply chain to the end user.
A PDU results in reduced product cost
through improved contract compliance, allowing for:
• Identification of
non-contract/contract opportunities
• Increased transaction accuracy for
ordering through bill payment
• Improved accuracy in product
sourcing
• Increase in patient safety due to
accuracy of product information
• Rapid access to information on new,
discontinued, replacement and recalled products
• Accurate information to generate
usable barcodes
How the PDU Works
A Product Data Utility is a system and
organization that interconnects trading partners across the
supply chain to synchronize core product data to standard
specifications. The PDU distributes standardized product data
from manufacturers and distributors to data aggregators and
end-users. It enables participants to synchronize and maintain
accurate product and packaging information in near real time.
