Broadlane Integrates Largest Supplier and Adds Two Important New Capabilities to Its E-Commerce Exchange.

Business Editors

SAN FRANCISCO--(BW HealthWire)--Feb. 27, 2002

Broadlane Inc., a leading provider of supply chain management services to the healthcare industry, today announced the integration of AmerisourceBergen (NYSE:ABC), Broadlane's largest supplier, into the Broadlane Exchange(TM), the company's private e-commerce exchange. In addition, the company announced the addition of two important new transaction sets to the Exchange, electronic invoicing and advance shipment notification.

"Taken together, these developments represent significant milestones for the Broadlane Exchange and for our customers," said Lee Marston, Broadlane's managing director of technology. "Our Exchange now leads the industry in spend-coverage-per-hospital through an e-commerce platform. This is a far more meaningful metric of exchange usage and value in the healthcare industry than is merely measuring how many hospitals may be connected to an exchange."

AmerisourceBergen provides pharmaceutical supplies and services to the majority of Broadlane's healthcare customer base. With the integration of AmerisourceBergen into the Broadlane Exchange, these customers now have access to much more detailed and timely information about their pharmaceutical purchasing patterns. Pharmaceuticals represent the largest single supply expense for the majority of Broadlane's healthcare customers.

Broadlane's strategy has been to capture the largest portion of its customers' contract purchasing by integrating first to the company's largest distribution partners. With AmerisourceBergen and its pharmaceutical volume now integrated, and with previous distributor integrations capturing med/surg and laboratory contract activity, Broadlane is now capturing nearly 50 percent of its customers' total dollar volume of contract purchases.

Broadlane also announced the addition of electronic invoicing and advance shipment notification as new transaction sets to its Exchange. These new capabilities allow both suppliers and providers to automate the traditionally manually intensive functions of receipt verification and invoice payment. Broadlane is now offering these capabilities to all of its trading partners as a standard component of the Broadlane Exchange, which also provides electronic purchase order delivery and purchase order acknowledgement capabilities.

"In the past, our provider customers have realized the benefits of these two transaction sets with only a limited number of suppliers," said Paul Garofolo, Broadlane's head of engineering. "With the addition of electronic invoicing and advance shipment notification we are extending these benefits to all of our customers and thus expanding the role of e-commerce as a cost-reducing tool."

Electronic invoicing eliminates the manual checking and data entry associated with transferring invoices from suppliers to provider accounts payable systems. It also helps improve order-matching accuracy to ensure correct payment processing.

Advance shipment notification allows healthcare providers to receive notice of exact shipment contents before an actual order arrives. This streamlines their receiving process by automating receipt reconciliation against purchase orders and allows them to quickly identify product and quantity discrepancies. It also expedites the movement of product into inventory, thereby reducing inventory safety stock requirements.

Since launching its Exchange in April 2001, Broadlane has rapidly added both functionality and volume to what is now regarded as one of the industry's most widely adopted e-commerce platforms. Currently 247 hospitals are integrated and purchasing through the Broadlane Exchange.

By utilizing the Broadlane Exchange, these hospitals are able to access thousands of products offered by hundreds of manufacturers. Since going live in April, it has captured more than 178,000 purchase orders representing customer orders of more than $300 million. The daily volume of customer purchase orders moving through the Exchange now regularly exceeds $4.5 million and total volume of currently signed customers is expected to exceed $1.2 billion by the end of 2002.

About Broadlane

Through an extensive suite of services, Broadlane delivers comprehensive supply chain management services to the healthcare industry. Those services include contract management, procurement strategy consulting, materials management outsourcing, and technology services. Among the companies that focus on improving efficiencies within the healthcare supply chain, only Broadlane offers this full array of services.

Broadlane customers include leading healthcare providers such as Kaiser Permanente, Tenet Healthcare Corporation (NYSE:THC), Universal Health Services (NYSE:UHS), Continuum Health Partners, The Health Alliance of Greater Cincinnati, Community Health Systems (NYSE:CYH), U.S. Oncology (Nasdaq:USON), Alliance Imaging Inc. (NYSE:AIQ) and others. Broadlane counts among its customers more than 300 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.