On Jan. 1, Baptist began a five-year partnership with an organization named MedAssets that will save Baptist $10 million this first year.
MedAssets operates a Group Purchasing Organization (GPO) —a collaborative of member health care institutions for which the GPO negotiates contracts with suppliers. MedAssets currently manages more than $30 billion of annual spend through the company’s GPO, on behalf of approximately 3,400 hospital clients, including some of the nation’s largest health care organizations, such as Kaiser Permanente, Vanderbilt and Baylor Health Care System. Their membership also includes 123,000 non-acute health care providers.
Baptist has played an important role in the history of health care GPOs. It was one of the founders of Voluntary Hospitals of America (VHA), which established the first GPO in 1979. MedAssets’ GPO will become part of Vizient, Inc. (formerly VHA-UHC Alliance NewCo, Inc.) later this month.