Woman’s Hospital has automated a six-step workflow to process the purchase orders the hospital sends to vendors.
Boston WorkStation searches the Meditech system once or twice a day for purchase orders that have been entered by various medical and surgical departments, then checks the departments' inventories - also kept on the Meditech system - for items that have fallen below minimum reorder points, and it either creates a new purchase order or adds those items to an existing purchase order.
The process also examines vendor information to ensure that the purchase order meets minimum order and other requirements, and then sends the purchase orders to vendors electronically or via fax, sending an email notification to buyers if the purchase order fails to go through for any reason such as failing to meet vendor minimums. Buyers can then add items to the order or hold it until that minimum is met. Woman’s has reduced their unnecessary minimum order fees to zero, and those penalties had been costing more than $300 a month.