To date, 91 of Tenet Healthcare’s hospitals have ordered through the Broadlane-GHX connection. Broadlane and GHX plan to quickly expand this connectivity to include more Broadlane provider customers and additional GHX supplier members.

“Johnson & Johnson, B. Braun and Guidant are important, widely used suppliers among our hospital customers, and we are pleased to now offer our customers electronic connectivity to these suppliers through the combined Broadlane–GHX solution,” said Lee Marston, Broadlane’s chief information officer. “We also appreciate the efforts of both GHX and these suppliers in getting this new integration in place as quickly as possible. Our customers are looking forward to our adding additional GHX affiliated suppliers in the near future.”

The connections are the first under a three-year agreement between the two companies announced on June 26, 2002. That agreement called for the two to connect their respective Internet-based trading exchanges, creating a more comprehensive supply chain solution for their respective customers. The Broadlane exchange is known as BroadLinkä.

“The BroadLink-GHX connection represents an important milestone toward achieving our shared goal of using e-commerce to help improve supply chain efficiencies,” says GHX Chief Executive Officer Mike Mahoney. “By working together, our respective exchanges are minimizing duplication and redundant costs for both suppliers and providers. Our participating members and customers will now be able to conduct business with one another through a single Internet connection, either to GHX or BroadLink, while significantly increasing the percentage of business that they can conduct through e-commerce.”

J&J subsidiaries that are part of the BroadLink-GHX connection are Johnson & Johnson Medical, Cordis, Codman, Ethicon, Ethicon Endo-Surgery, Gynecare and Depuy.

About Broadlane
Broadlane delivers total cost management to the healthcare industry, allowing hospitals to reduce operational costs while maintaining or enhancing patient care and clinician satisfaction. Broadlane services include contracting, clinical services, technology and data management, and outsourcing services. Among the companies that focus on cost management within the healthcare supply chain, only Broadlane offers this total cost management approach.

Broadlane customers include leading healthcare providers such as Kaiser Permanente, Tenet Healthcare Corporation, Universal Health Services, Continuum Health Partners, The Health Alliance of Greater Cincinnati, Kindred Healthcare, Community Health Systems, U.S. Oncology, Alliance Imaging Inc., and others. Broadlane counts among its customers more than 450 acute care hospitals and more than 1,400 sub-acute care facilities. Broadlane has offices in San Francisco and Oakland, Calif.; Cincinnati; Dallas; and New York City. For more information, visit www.broadlane.com.

About GHX
Global Healthcare Exchange, LLC (GHX) has created an open and neutral Internet-based trading exchange, along with additional value-added products and services, to reduce costs and improve efficiencies for all participants in the healthcare supply chain. GHX’s members and strategic partners include suppliers and distributors; integrated delivery networks (IDNs), hospitals and ancillary healthcare facilities; group purchasing organizations and their proprietary healthcare trading exchanges; and supply chain technology companies. GHX has built the AllSourceÔ product catalog, the first in healthcare to be based on industry standards and contain normalized data owned and verified by suppliers. The accuracy of the AllSource catalog enables GHX to successfully address many of the most common and costly problems inherent in healthcare procurement. Equity owners of GHX include Johnson & Johnson; GE Medical Systems; Baxter International, Inc.; Abbott Laboratories; Medtronic, Inc.; AmerisourceBergen Corporation; B. Braun Medical Inc., Becton, Dickinson & Co.; Boston Scientific Corporation; Cardinal Health, Inc.; C.R. Bard, Inc.; Fisher Scientific International Inc.; Guidant Corporation; McKesson Corporation; Siemens Medical Solutions and Tyco International, Ltd. For more information visit www.ghx.com.