A Medical Device Daily

I-Flow (Lake Forest, California) said it has been awarded a three-year national purchasing contract by HealthTrust Purchasing Group (Brentwood, Tennessee), to make the ON-Q pain relief system available to its members. This includes ON-Q PainBuster, ON-Q SilverSoaker antimicrobial catheter with SilvaGard and ON-Q C-bloc, I-Flow said.

The agreement will be in effect from Oct. 1, 2008-Sept. 30, 2011.

"I-Flow's agreement with HealthTrust will help the GPO's member organizations optimize post-surgical care for their patients by offering them better pain control after surgery while significantly reducing patients' narcotic intake," said President/CEO Donald Earhart. "We believe that ON-Q will also become an important part of surgical site infection (SSI) prevention, as facilities nationwide become financially responsible for select hospital-acquired conditions that Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) will no longer pay for starting on Oct. 1 of this year."

He added, "This contract is a great win for both our companies and for our customers as we believe that it further acknowledges ON-Q as a best practice that is rapidly growing to become a standard of care."

According to I-Flow, clinical research has shown that ON-Q improves post-surgical outcomes by significantly reducing the need for narcotics while providing significantly better pain relief than narcotics alone so patients get back to normal faster. Concurrently, ON-Q may also help reduce SSIs by decreasing the need for narcotics that impair the immune response. With ON-Q, patients are often discharged from the hospital earlier which frequently leads to cost savings, the company added.

HealthTrust supports more than 1,400 not-for-profit and for-profit acute-care facilities, as well as ambulatory surgery centers, physician practices and alternate-care sites.

The ON-Q PainBuster Post-Op Pain Relief System provides continuous infusion of a local anesthetic directly into the patient's surgical site for effective, non-narcotic post-operative pain relief for up to five days. The device is completely portable and can be carried in a pouch or attached to a patients' clothing, the company noted.

I-Flow makes drug delivery systems and surgical products for post-surgical pain relief and surgical site care.

In other agreements/contracts news:

• Premier Purchasing Partners (San Diego) said a new portfolio for IV therapy products, divided into four categories, has been awarded to eight companies.

Non-pharmacy capital equipment (including pumps and dedicated sets): B. Braun Medical (Bethlehem, Pennsylvania); Baxter Healthcare (Deerfield, Illinois); Cardinal Health (Alaris) (Dublin, Ohio); Excelsior Medical (Neptune, New Jersey); Hospira (Lake Forest, Illinois); and Sigma International General Medical Apparatus (Medina, New York).

Non-drug-related consumables (including standards sets, tubing/extensions, accessories): B. Braun, Baxter, Cardinal Health, Hospira and ICU Medical (San Clemente, California).

Pharmacy non-capital products (including fluids, bag-based drug delivery systems, total parenteral nutrition): B. Braun, Baxter and Hospira.

Pharmacy capital equipment and admixture supplies (including compounders and accessories and automated filling devices): Baxa (Englewood, Colorado), B. Braun, Baxter and Hospira.

The new portfolio was redesigned under the guidance of the Premier member IV Therapy Products Task Force, the National Pharmacy Committee, the Nursing Committee and the Strategic Advisory Committee. These groups provided input and feedback to ensure key sourcing objectives were met, Premier said.

The 60-month agreements, effective Feb. 1, are available to acute-care and continuum-of-care members of the Premier healthcare alliance.

Premier also reported an agreement for hand-held Doppler equipment and accessories with Huntleigh Healthcare (Eatontown, New Jersey). The 36-month agreement is also available to acute-care and continuum-of-care members of the Premier healthcare alliance.

• Lawson Software (St. Paul, Minnesota) said that ProHealth Care (Waukesha, Wisconsin) selected the Lawson Talent Management Suite, part of the Lawson Strategic Human Capital Management System. ProHealth, an existing Lawson customer, will use Lawson Talent Management to better identify talent within its organization, improve recruiting and automate compensation processes through a single, integrated system, the company said. The contract was signed during Lawson's 4Q08, which ended May 31.

• tw telecom (Littleton, Colorado), a provider of managed voice, Internet and data networking solutions for business, said it has completed a $3.2 million, multi-year installation of telecommunications solutions for Virtual Radiologic (Minneapolis), a national provider of teleradiology services.