This news came out about an hour ago. Like we said here in a previous post, others in the U.S. would follow Premier’s announcement of last month. Here’s the lead sentence in the news release:

Amerinet today affirmed its commitment to proactively partner with its customers – both providers and suppliers – to adopt and continue to implement GS1 healthcare standards with a focus on driving costs out of the supply chain.

The following quote comes from Mary Beth Lang, Amerinet’s senior vice president, business intelligence and spend analytics, as provided in the release: “Amerinet believes that helping providers remove the inefficiencies related to data management through the adoption of the GS1 standards must become an industry imperative.”

We couldn’t agree more, of course. Meanwhile, if you are not very familiar with Amerinet, here’s a link to their website home page.

Lastly, you may want to scan the release yourself to see reaction to this news by Brent Johnson, vice president of supply chain, CPO at Intermountain Healthcare in Salt Lake City and an Amerinet customer. It is relevant because some have been suggesting lately that patient safety is a secondary benefit of GS1 adoption. It doesn’t sound like Mr. Johnson would necessarily concur with that. It’s not a direct quote, but the release attributes the following to Mr. Johnson: …implementing GS1 standards will prove a defining moment for the future of the healthcare industry and serve as a linchpin toward Intermountain’s goals of providing patients the highest quality of care at the lowest possible cost.