FAQ

General Questions

What is the MediLedger Network?

The MediLedger Network is the leading life sciences industry network that powers our solutions for data alignment and transaction accuracy between trading partners. The network is decentralized, meaning trading partners are doing business directly without any party sitting in the middle.

The primary solution running on the MediLedger Network today is called Contracts & Chargebacks for customer/contract alignment and chargeback accuracy between manufacturers, wholesalers & GPOs.

What is Chronicled?

Chronicled is the technology company that developed the MediLedger Network in collaboration with leading companies in the life sciences industry. Chronicled provides improvements to the network itself and develops the solutions, run by participants, on top of the network.

What is the Contracts & Chargebacks solution?

The Contracts & Chargebacks solution gives manufacturers, wholesalers and GPOs on the MediLedger Network a unified view of:
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Clean/validated GPO membership
Customer identifiers (HIN, DEA, 34B, etc…)
Pricing contracts

With this data aligned through the network, the MediLedger blockchain can then enforce chargeback business rules against pricing contracts in real-time, ensuring chargeback and pricing accuracy.

Business Questions

What will the contracts and chargebacks process look like for suppliers on MediLedger?

Through the MediLedger Network, suppliers receive GPO roster updates in real-time, pre-validated against aligned customer identity data like HIN, DEA and 340B.

Suppliers can then use their MediLedger node to automate customer evaluation against the aligned roster and identity data, and generate proposals for new/existing customers to be added to existing systems.

Validation of contract updates shared through the MediLedger Network enables wholesalers to more quickly load contract updates, ensuring suppliers have better insight into pricing being offered by wholesalers to their customers.

When wholesalers go to submit chargebacks, the MediLedger Network enforces accuracy of the chargeback data against the latest state of the contract. For returns, credits, contract backdating and other resubmission scenarios MediLedger automates resubmissions and maintains accuracy against the contract and the original chargebacks.

Why should a pharmaceutical supplier join MediLedger?

For pharmaceutical suppliers, the current contracting and chargebacks process requires extensive manual/duplicate effort, carries unnecessary compliance risk, and results in revenue leakage.

Suppliers who join the network see massive time savings by eliminating/improving manual processes like resolving chargeback errors, evaluating new customers, managing GPO membership and auditing customer master data.

Suppliers also see a large reduction in revenue leakage from the elimination of unapproved deductions/unresolved chargeback settlements, incorrect chargeback approvals, credits/returns incorrectly rejected as duplicates and low dollar chargebacks under the threshold for review.

Other benefits include the elimination of unnecessary add/re-bills for improved customer service, more accurate government pricing based on chargeback data, reduced compliance risk from real-time adherence to the DEA database, immediate contract activation and (for generic suppliers) increased sales from faster price changes in wholesaler systems.

Why is Cardinal Health participating in the MediLedger Network?

Cardinal’s goal is to provide the best service to both customers and suppliers. Today, pricing errors and re-bills create manual effort for everyone involved. With contract updates shared through the MediLedger Network, Cardinal can load updates into their system faster and ensure the right price is given to the right customer.

Through supplier business rules, enforced by the MediLedger Network, Cardinal can get real-time feedback on chargeback accuracy and resolve errors proactively, rather than the back and forth communication that occurs today.

How does a supplier get started?

To get started suppliers just need to speak with a member of the Chronicled team who can explain commercial terms and then provide login information right away for suppliers to get started with easy web access. Chronicled offers a subscription based solution.

For the full solution with integrations to revenue management systems, suppliers can discuss with the Chronicled team the best path forward based on available resources. Deployment of the full solution can take anywhere from a couple weeks to 2-3 months.

IT Questions

What is blockchain and how is it involved?

Blockchain is a mechanism to enforce business rules automatically between participants.

Every participant in a blockchain network has a copy of the blockchain data and the rules being enforced on that data (See Question 9 below for more information on data privacy on a blockchain network). No single party can change the data or the rules. This creates trust between trading partners that was never possible before now.

An example business rule enforced by the network might be:
Manufacturer A requires that every chargeback submitted by wholesaler B has an active customer HIN that matches an eligible customer HIN on the contract

How is data privacy maintained in the MediLedger Network?

Contract and chargeback data is extremely sensitive, and is only meant to be shared between relevant trading partners. The MediLedger blockchain is unique in how it facilitates business rule enforcement while maintaining complete data privacy.

On the MediLedger Network, contract updates, chargebacks and other sensitive data are not published directly on the blockchain, instead business rules are enforced against cryptographic proofs (zero knowledge proofs) of the data, published on the blockchain instead of the data itself.

Every company in the network running a node has a copy of the blockchain to facilitate rule enforcement across the industry, but zero business intelligence is leaked through the blockchain. This is the true differentiator and strength of the MediLedger Network.

How does the MediLedger Network relate to my revenue management system?

Revenue Management systems (like Model N or Vistex) or other existing systems remain the source of truth for customers and contracts. The MediLedger Network compliments revenue systems by automating the manual processes related to membership management It further validates and communicates contracts & pricing from manufacturer to wholesaler.

By integrating your revenue system with the MediLedger Network, processes like evaluating new customers, auditing customer master data and resolving chargeback errors can all be dramatically improved or even eliminated through the MediLedger Network.

How is the MediLedger Network related to EDI?

The MediLedger Network replaces EDI messages like 845, 844 and 849.

The problem with EDI is that there is no ability to enforce business rules, and it is typically a one directional mechanism for data transfer. Trading partners have to reconcile and process whatever they receive through EDI, creating manual processing, misalignment and delays across the industry.

Everything on the MediLedger Network is validated and shared in real-time, and allows for enforcement of business rules. Participants now have control over the data and transactions they receive from trading partners.

What sort of IT resources are required to join the MediLedger Network?

The MediLedger Network has opportunities for suppliers to begin participating and get value, without any IT resources required. Suppliers can get simple web access with clean GPO rosters from their existing GPO partners as well as the complete HIN, DEA and 340B identity databases updated live.

For the complete solution, pre-built connectors exist for easy integrations with existing revenue management systems to pull customer and contract data into the MediLedger Network to align with trading partners.