GHX acquires Chicago-based health-data company

LOUISVILLE — Global Healthcare Exchange Inc. has acquired Chicago-based Lumere Inc., a provider of data and analytics solutions that enable health-care organizations to build clinically integrated supply chains and optimize medication formulary management.

Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. 

Louisville-based GHX is a health-care business and data automation company, providing health-care organizations with a cloud-based supply-chain technology platform. The company works with manufacturers and distributors in North America and Europe.

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The Lumere acquisition extends GHX’s footprint in the pharmaceutical market, helping health systems manage pharmacy costs. Lumere has developed a data and analytics engine that helps organizations understand the best products to use on the best patients, at the right time. That’s important, as hospitals increasingly are reimbursed not through a fee for service, but through fees for outcomes.

“With health systems more accountable than ever for the results they deliver, the strategic imperatives of reducing cost and improving quality of care are more critical than ever,” Bruce Johnson, CEO and president of GHX, said in a prepared statement. “We’ll continue to support our customers in their evolution from reimbursement based on quantity to reimbursement based on quality. We will do this by combining the strength of the GHX platform and the industry’s most comprehensive repository of item and transaction data, with Lumere’s deep clinical data and machine learning powered analytics to deliver the critical evidence-based insights health care needs.”

Johnson said in an interview with BizWest that the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, passed in 2010, has shifted reimbursements toward quality, not quantity.

“Having it tied to quality is a good thing, and important for us,” Johnson said, “especially as we look at the way that gross domestic product [in the health-care sector] continues to rise.”

As hospitals become more focused on outcomes, and more contracts on the payor’s side incorporate quality metrics, systems must be created to provide that data. GHX will take the clinical data of Lumere and blend it with its own supply-chain data to help health-care organizations focus on the right drug or device, and the right supplier.

Through the Lumere acquisition, GHX seeks to provide a single source for management of devices and drugs used in the delivery of care.

“This [Lumere] is the leading company today in this space in the U.S. market,” Johnson said, touting Lumere’s data on 32,000 drugs and devices.

“Together, GHX and Lumere will provide an unmatched source of information that enables health systems to align purchasing and utilization decisions with evidence,” said Hani Elias, Lumere CEO. “Our combined companies will help health-care stakeholders deliver care that’s backed by data and guided by evidence, allowing drug and device expenditures to be supported not just by price but by clinical outcomes.

“Shining a light on outcomes will provide clinicians and hospital administrators with the information they need to help make the best decisions for every patient,” he added.

Elias, chief technology officer Will Danford, and president and chief strategy officer Eric Meizlish will remain with the combined organization, with Lumere continuing to be based in Chicago.

Cain Brothers served as financial adviser to Lumere, and Katten Muchin Rosenman LLP served as legal counsel to Lumere. Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton LLP served as legal counsel to GHX.

Johnson said that GHX has completed 15 acquisitions since 2000, with Lumere representing the fourth purchase in the past five years. GHX’s supply-chain system is now in use in facilities representing 85 percent of the beds in the United States.

GHX employs 250 people in Louisville, with 750 employees worldwide, with the company increasing its employee count by about 10 percent annually, Johnson said.