Intralign Awarded Contract With Novation

Intralign has announced it has been awarded a supplier contract with Novation, the industry’s largest health care supply chain expertise, analytics and contracting company for the more than 65, 000 members of VHA Inc., UHC, Children’s Hospital Association and Provista, LLC. Intralign will offer intra-operative clinical support services with the aim of enabling the members served by Novation to better control the economics and quality of major joint replacement as well as other surgical categories.

“We partner with suppliers that deliver excellent savings and value to the members we serve, ” said Pete Allen, area senior vice president, sourcing operations, Novation, in the October 1, 2013 news release. “Intralign is an organization that offers members care efficiency with a particular specialty in total joint replacement procedures, which are growing rapidly. Gaining control of the cost drivers in the intra-operative space is critically important to our members as they shift to emerging care delivery models and seek ways to improve the cost and quality of care.”

Intralign’s integrated suite of services includes intra-operative clinical support, which makes Surgical First Assistants (SFAs) available to the hospital, saving resources while ensuring the best quality support in the intra-operative process. SFAs are clinicians who have specialized training in surgery as well as appropriate license and certification to help with the procedure. Staffing models that increase involvement of mid-level qualified talent help optimize physician involvement, increase efficiency of care and can ultimately increase throughput. The benefit of intra-operative support is enhanced by Intralign’s analytics services, which monitor and collect data on key metrics in the operating room—such as implant utilization and cost to surgical and anesthesia time—to identify opportunities for improvement in care delivery. Finally, the company also offers intelligent care design support to help providers optimize the flow of people and activities in the operating room, so that ideal efficiencies and quality goals are realized.

“To be awarded a supplier contract with Novation is a significant confirmation of Intralign’s value proposition, ” said Rick Ferreira, president and CEO of Intralign. “Our services are really resonating with providers because we offer a unique approach to achieving sustainable care efficiencies for the delivery of orthopedic and other types of surgery. Intralign can help them better understand how and where resources are being used, how to optimize those resources and, finally, how to enhance the management of specialized clinical labor to increase throughput.”

Ferreira told OTW, “Intralign brings highly trained and skilled Surgical First Assists to the OR to help provide better quality of care with fewer resources. Intralign’s SFAs receive advanced training in important procedures and devices, and are certified in the newest technologies, such as robotics. This enables them to assist in every step of the procedure, which reduces the overall surgery time and frees up the surgeon and hospital to take on additional procedures. In fact, in a review of Intralign’s 2012 cases where a SFA was utilized, there was a 30% reduction in surgery time across all major surgery categories—enabling the provider to care for more patents.”