Casechek and Northwestern Medicine win the 2023 Tom Hughes Collaboration Award

We are thrilled to share some exciting news today – Casechek and Northwestern Medicine have been honored with the prestigious 2023 Tom Hughes Collaboration Award!

This award is presented by SMI, a forum of senior supply chain leaders, in honor of Tom Hughes, a supply chain leader and innovator who created lasting change in the healthcare supply chain industry. Award recipients are members of the SMI community who have demonstrated outstanding collaboration and partnership in their supply chain efforts.

Casechek and Northwestern Medicine have been honored with this award for their collaboration in solving the challenge of manually managing Bill-Only payments. Bill-Only payments constitute a significant portion of supply chain expenses, accounting for up to ⅓ of all supply expenses and half of procedural expenses. Bill-Only payments have traditionally been managed by vendor sales reps, leaving hospitals with limited oversight and control. Consequently, hospitals often have multiple departments and people dedicated to managing the manual process.

Sharing the core tenet, never digitize a broken Bill-Only process, Casechek and Northwestern Medicine emphasized uncovering and solving root problems through deep data analysis, user interviews, and process mapping. To ensure the new solution delivered value to both IDNs and suppliers in the broader market, Casechek and Northwestern solicited feedback from multiple stakeholders. Quality was built into the process by systematically addressing and unifying data across clinical (EHR) and financial (ERP) systems. Ultimately, the collaboration enabled Casechek to build the industry’s first complete end-to-end patient-specific implant automation that integrates financial (ERP) and clinical (EHR) data.

Through deep collaboration and a focus on building quality into the process, the new platform:

• Decreased Bill-Only processing time and labor: >82% Reduction in Labor; from 17,000 to 3,000 hours annually.
• Created >99% EHR documentation accuracy.
• Reduced cycle time from procedure to PO: 430% increase in POs taking 0-3 days and a 76% reduction in bills taking longer than 7 days.
• Identified savings from undocumented charges, overpayments, and non-contracted spend.

This achievement would not have been possible without the incredible efforts of both Casechek’s and Northwestern Medicine’s dedicated team members, who have consistently gone above and beyond to foster collaboration and drive excellence.

We are excited about what the future holds and we can’t wait to continue making a positive impact in the world of supply chain.

Stay tuned for more updates and exciting developments!

Read the full press release here.