Intalere – formerly Amerinet – brings to market plenty of supply chain experience
Intalere Vertical
“Intalere” is the new name of the GPO formerly known as Amerinet. The word, according to Intalere President and CEO Brent Johnson, comes from a Latin word that means “to nourish.”
And Intalere is in an excellent position to nourish its members’ supply chain operations, says Johnson. That’s because Intalere’s sole owner since last summer – Salt Lake City, Utah-based Intermountain Healthcare – is a 22-hospital IDN with 185 clinics, a health plans division, a Medical Group with 1,400 physicians, and lots of supply chain experience. In fact, prior to becoming president and CEO of Amerinet (now Intalere) in July 2015, Johnson was Intermountain’s vice president of supply chain and chief purchasing officer.
It is that experience that Johnson intends to bring to Intalere members, and he believes a growing number of hospitals and IDNs will take notice
Intermountain acquired 100 percent stake in Amerinet in June 2015. “We wanted to morph [Amerinet] into a positive commercial engine of best practices in supply chain and clinical care,” says Johnson. Historically a GPO, Intalere will evolve in the next six to 12 months into a professional supply chain organization that also does contracting, he says.
“What’s different about us is [the fact that we] can sit down with people and say, ‘We know how to do this in your culture, because we have done it in Intermountain. We’re supply chain people, just like you.’” Intalere can draw on the supply chain expertise of other members too, such as Virginia Mason Health System in Seattle, Wash.
“We will offer solutions to help people manage their entire non-labor spend, and we won’t do it on the back of administrative fees,” adds Johnson. “We will retain administrative fees for awhile, but in a couple of years, 50 percent of our revenues will come from consulting and management fees.” Intalere intends to educate interested members in supply chain strategies, and encourage them to hire in-house talent to carry out those strategies.
Currently, Intalere is in the midst of integrating Intermountain and Amerinet contracts, says Johnson. “When we get done, we will have only one contracting department and one contracting strategy.” That doesn’t mean all contracting will move to Salt Lake City, however. Intalere will also spend the next months integrating the spend analytics capabilities of the former Amerinet (which Johnson says are very strong) with those of Intermountain.
Intalere intends to stand tall in a land of GPO giants, e.g., Vizient, Premier and HealthTrust, says Johnson. “We will be two to three times our size in three or four years, because we’re attracting a lot of people,” he predicts. But its strength won’t necessarily come from size.
“We know how to be partners [with IDNs],” he says. “We want to sit down with people, do supply chain assessments, tell them how many millions of dollars they may be losing because they are organized poorly, or because they don’t manage their suppliers well, or they don’t have the right processes in place, or they don’t negotiate well. And then we’ll ask, ‘How can we help?’ We will teach them, we will encourage them to invest in talent if necessary.
“We will take [members] at whatever level of supply chain maturity they are, and devise a plan for them to get better, either piggybacking off Intermountain’s best practices, or those of someone else.
“Intermountain didn’t buy Amerinet to make a lot of money,” he concludes. “Yes, we have to be financially responsible. But we want to be a model for the industry, and we want to help the industry. It’s a fun thing to be a part of.”