How the State Health Jurisdictions are using NPC Data

Health Purchasing Victoria

Health Purchasing Victoria (HPV) conducts tenders on behalf of Victorian Public Hospitals. HPV is funded by the Department of Health Victoria.

How is HPV using your data today?

Every year HPV is required to consult with public hospitals and health services to develop its Confirmed Annual Tender Program. HPV then issues requests for tenders to establish best - value prices for these products.

To assist with tender development and viability assessment, hospitals and health services are requested to supply data and information to HPV about their current purchasing habits and usage volumes. HPV then uses this data to form valid judgments concerning pricing viability of tenders and to perform evaluation of tender outcomes.

For a number of years, HPV has had evaluation criteria established to score tenderers who demonstrate the highest level of compliance with the requirements of the NPC as well as use of other aspects of the GS1 System, such as GTIN allocation, bar coding and eMessaging capabilities.

Since 2009 HPV has asked tenderers to submit the item and price data relating to products they were tendering in the ‘GS1net / NPC’ browser template’s format.

HPV stipulated that it would prefer to enter into an agreement with tenderers who would load and publish all product information and pricing for products selected as part of the contract on to the NPC prior to execution of the contract. Loading of this data is required at least one month prior to the anticipated commencement of the contract. Data must be published to both Victoria Health (as a data recipient) and to any wholesalers / distributors nominated in the tender submission as authorized suppliers on behalf of the tenderer.

HPV are now building the Victorian Product Catalogue. This solution will receive data via M2M capability, directly from the NPC and map that to each of the Area Health Services.

In accordance with that, they have established the Victorian Catalogue Team to support this solution

Why the National Product Catalogue?

The data provided by the AHS is inconsistently maintained, being stored on different systems and formatted differently. This information could not be properly reconciled and used without significant manual effort.

For more transparent and improved purchasing practices, actual reporting within the state on sales and making payment to suppliers on time – the National Product Catalogue is the option being adopted by HPV.

Australia's State Health Jurisdictions are using data from the National Product Catalogue (NPC) to manage their procurement processes.

Health Support Services (New South Wales Health)

Health Support Services has been a member of the National Product Catalogue (NPC) since 2005.

Health Support Services have been actively working with supplier data published to them on the NPC and reconciling it with the State Based Build of the Oracle Financial Management & Information system. They have their own middleware solution (called Gentran) that receives files from the NPC. This solution enables the validation of supplier’s data, the linking of that data to the internal catalogue (Called Health Item Master File), as well as acting as a holding area for the information coming from the NPC. Linked information is subsequently pushed to Oracle for use in the procurement process.

Gentran is the point of access to NPC item and price data by HSS Service Centers. These Centres provide procurement and logistic services across the State, as follows:
• Parramatta
• Newcastle
• Westmead (Ambulance Service)

HSS is currently providing Gentran training and access to all Clinical Product Managers at each of the Local Health Districts.

Health Support Services incorporated in 2010 for tender submissions the use of the NPC Browser Template/Health Submission Spreadsheet providing product and pricing information.