Health Purchasing Victoria NPC Onboarding

NPC user guide

If you sell or wish to sell products to a Victorian public health service, you will need to upload your pricing and product information to the NPC.

Suppliers that are currently party to HPV contracts are required to publish their data to the NPC, which is mandatory for most tender submissions. All data relevant to the Victorian health sector should be published to the NPC, not just products covered by HPV contracts.

Steps to follow

1. Publish accurate data – Identifiers such as GTINs, manufacturer names and numbers, and supplier part numbers assist in correctly identifying an item and the packaging level required.
2. Complete data – If not all relevant details are published, a product may not be ordered due to the gap in the details provided. For example, if you provide lead-time to delivery, regulatory details and product classifications, your product may be selected instead of others.
3. Keep published data up-to-date – Update products as they are discontinued or added to supplier catalogues. Maintain availability details at product and packaging levels to ensure stale data does not deter potential users from looking at your products in the NPC.

Uploading good quality data to the NPC will deliver many business benefits including:

• Providing accurate information for health services will reduce queries and phone traffic.
• More accurate invoicing, reducing the number of queries.
• Populating the new Common Catalogue to facilitate or support existing electronic data interchange (EDI).
• The right products will be in the right place, at the right time, with fewer products returned due to incorrect ordering.  That also means fewer operation cancellations.

To find out more about Victoria’s Common Catalogue, visit Health Purchasing Victoria website and help centre.

Contact information

Health Purchasing Victoria NPC contacts

Common Catalogue
vct@hpv.zendesk.com

GS1 NPC contacts

NPC Supplier Enablement team
1300 227 263
npccustomersupport@gs1au.org

The National Product Catalogue now populates the new Common Catalogue which will be a single source of pricing and product information for the Victorian public health sector.

This single source of information will enable greater supply chain efficiencies and ultimately better patient outcomes, such as the ability to more easily replace products in short supply or those subject to recalls with functional equivalents.

HPV encourages suppliers to upload images wherever possible, to ensure products are more visible and accessible for health services through the Common Catalogue. It also helps clinicians identify the right products and reduce the number of operations cancelled due to incorrect orders.

To find out more about how your data contributes to the Victorian public health sector, watch this short video.