Customer Highlight on Jay County Hospital

Claudia Jones, Jay County Hospital

 Committed to patients and community since 1906, Jay County Hospital, located in Portland, IN, is a critical access hospital and provides comprehensive care – from diagnosis to recovery – in the full range of emergency, medical and surgical subspecialties.  These include emergency, medical intensive care, surgical, obstetrics/nursery, women’s center and pharmacy.  The hospital employs around 200 employees.   Claudia Jones, Materials Management Manager heads up the Purchasing Department at Jay County Hospital where she and two other employees under her are responsible for all the ordering of goods and services for the hospital.  Her department’s duties include purchasing requisitions, ordering, receiving, distribution, sending out registered mail, stocking shelves and verifying information.  Ms. Jones says Jay County Hospital has been a Bellwether customer for at least eighteen years – as long as she has been in the position of Materials Manager.   The Purchasing Department handles around 200 purchase orders per month, covering a wide variety of items, from cleaning supplies to diapers.  They work with an average of twenty vendors for routine orders, and other sporadic vendors for specialty items.  While ordering patterns are holding steady, the hospital has recently acquired two additional offices which will increase the work load over time.   Jay County Hospital does not make use of P cards; instead, Managers have the discretion of writing Requisitions up to $1,000.  Items that exceed that monetary amount must have the approval of their CEO.  Eventually, however, every purchase made flows through her department.  The Purchasing Department reports monthly all distributions to their CFO.  Not counting capital expenses, the inventory budget alone approximates $200,000.   The hospital currently uses the Bellwether Purchasing Software Receiving and Inventory modules and intends to add the Bar Code module.   Ms. Jones commented that one of her first duties after coming on board as the Materials Manager was to move the Department from a manual system to an automated system.  She says, “Everything was done by hand, and it was very cumbersome and time consuming.  My challenge was to get with the times!  Bellwether Purchasing Software came highly recommended by our CEO, Lynn England, who was familiar with the software through Alliance Health Systems.  So, we were steered in the direction of Bellwether Purchasing Software, and we have never regretted the choice.   After the challenge of finding and implementing Bellwether Purchasing Software, the next challenge was transferring our entire inventory, vendor information, transaction data, product codes and other information to the Bellwether database.  Since we did all of this in house, it took a few months, but the results have been great.”  She went on to say that the ease of use of the product is its greatest achievement.  “The simplicity of the software is great.  We just love it, and the Customer Service Staff is fantastic.  Every time I have ever called in, they have been responsive and quickly resolved my problems.  This is why, after eighteen years, we are still a satisfied customer.”