1043-bed IDN Improves Purchasing Workflows and Saves Over $2.4 Million in First Year with CostCheck

Drug budgets rarely leak in one obvious place. They lose money in the gap between what a health system is contracted to pay and what it actually pays, order by order. Off-contract purchases, missed GPO pricing, and overlooked NDC alternatives pile up quietly across hundreds of daily buying decisions. For most pharmacy teams, catching those misses by hand is not realistic. That is the problem CostCheck was built to solve.

CostCheck is Bluesight’s pharmacy procurement software for hospitals and health systems. It connects drug cost management and pharmacy purchasing inventory management in one workflow, so buyers see the lower-cost, contract-compliant option at the moment they place an order rather than weeks later in a variance report.

The results

This case study follows a 1,043-bed integrated delivery network (IDN) in Massachusetts that partnered with Bluesight to build and deploy CostCheck across its pharmacy operations. In the first year, the health system captured more than $2.4 million in hard-dollar savings, improved GPO compliance, and standardized NDC purchasing decisions that had previously varied from site to site.

The part worth reading twice is the effort behind the number. The pharmacy team reached those savings with roughly 45 minutes of engagement per week. Instead of manual price comparisons and contract lookups, buyers acted on clear, prioritized recommendations, which gave staff time back for clinical work instead of spreadsheets.

What smarter procurement looks like

Strong pharmacy purchasing inventory management is not about buying less. It is about buying the right product, at the right contract price, from the right source, every time. CostCheck brings that discipline to daily purchasing by flagging savings opportunities buyers would otherwise miss and by keeping orders aligned with GPO contracts and formulary decisions.

The case study breaks down how the health system did it:

• How the team found and captured missed GPO compliance savings
• The role of NDC standardization in reducing drug spend across multiple facilities
• How CostCheck fit into existing purchasing workflows without adding headcount
• The path to $2.4 million in first-year hard-dollar savings

See the full story

Drug cost management should pay for itself and then some. This case study shows what that looks like for a large health system managing real contract complexity and real budget pressure. Download the full case study to see the numbers and the workflow behind them.