July 2009,
St. Louis, Missouri.
BJC HealthCare ‘Goes Live’ with AtPar Supply Chain Solutions
St. Louis, Missouri - BJC HealthCare, among the nation’s largest and most prestigious hospital systems, has begun a live rollout of the new AtPar mobile supply chain system, a single solution that delivers seamless integration between materials management and the BJC network’s ERP system.
According to Marian Reynolds, director of materials management at BJC, the AtPar Receiving and Delivery application launched May 12 at Missouri Baptist Medical Center, a 489-bed hospital in St. Louis. “We’re very excited about this application and believe that as we get ready to roll it out to other hospitals it will be even better,” he said.
Reynolds said plans call for installation of the AtPar Mobile Supply Chain Execution suite of wireless products in 12 additional BJC facilities. By the end of 2009 operational plan and data sites for AtPar’s Cart Count module, the AtPar point-of-use solution that captures patient charges at the nursing station, and accounts payable pick applications, will also be in use.
Two more BJC hospitals are scheduled to go live with AtPar in August: Progress West HealthCare Center, a 34-bed facility in suburban O’Fallon, MO, and 79-bed Barnes-Jewish West County hospital in St. Louis. The goal is to complete the first phase of 13 AtPar rollouts to hospitals and some alternate care facilities before the end of the year.
AtPar’s distribution application wirelessly scans barcodes at the receiving point, relieving receiving personnel from the task and time spent traversing back and forth from workstations to record entries. Reynolds points out that the AtPar application brings another, somewhat less tangible, benefit: It promotes a green environment. “Before using AtPar, our personnel had to deliver tickets and run copies to get signatures and then they had to file the tickets,” he says. “Because the system documents everything going on in our operation it eliminates the need to create non-essential pieces of paper.”
Reynolds describes the new AtPar procedure. “When our personnel receive a delivery we scan the person’s badge which produces an electronic record and creates an electronic audit trail. Anyone requesting a package can look up and find when the PO was received along with its status in our system so the requestor knows it is in the hospital. The system documents the name of the receiver and produces an electronic receipt on a screen that includes name, date and time.”
Kishore Bala, director of sales and marketing for AtPar Inc., says that once the system is fully operation at BJC, the AtPar solutions “will help streamline receiving and delivery and picking and move the system from a paper-based to an automated system with tracking capabilities for both P.O. and non-P.O. packages such as those sent via FedEx and UPS.”
About AtPar, Inc.
The AtPar mobile supply chain product suite is a single solution delivering seamless integration with ERP systems and is designed to reduce time, cut implementation costs and “future-proof” a hospital’s supply chain operations. AtPar architecture is built on a standards-based, build-to-integrate approach that enables companies to rapidly wirelessly enable their enterprise supply chain management software. AtPar products, which are in use in more than 150 hospitals and hospital systems in 24 states, increase productivity and lower the cost structure for enterprise IT organizations by providing a unified, simplified and extensible architecture. AtPar’s Mobile Supply Chain Execution suite of products help organizations automate all operations related to materials management, inventory control, distribution and supply chain. AtPar offers an integrated suite of applications through wireless devices, providing an efficient way to bring the power of large enterprise systems to the handheld.
Based in Lebanon, NH, and founded by an enthusiastic young team of IT and healthcare industry professionals, AtPar Inc., which is privately held, began operations in 1999. For more information on the company and its suite of solutions see www.atparinc.com.
About BJC.
BJC HealthCare is one of the nation’s largest nonprofit healthcare organizations, delivering services to residents primarily in the greater St. Louis, southern Illinois and mid-Missouri regions. With net revenue of $3.1 billion, BJC serves urban, suburban and rural communities and includes 13 hospitals and multiple community health locations. Services include inpatient and outpatient care, primary care, community health and wellness, workplace health, home health, community mental health, rehabilitation, long-term care and hospice.
