Cardinal Health, a global provider of products and services that improve the safety and productivity of health care, said it signed a three-year dual source agreement with Novation, the industry's leading contracting services company, to provide Presource custom procedure kits and Procedure Based Delivery System (PBDSTM) modules to the 11,500 hospital and surgery centre members of the University HealthSystem Consortium (UHC), VHA and Provista.

Under the agreement, which is effective February 1, Cardinal Health will supply these customers with Presource kits and PBDS modules for all areas within the acute care hospital and surgery centre environment, including the operating room, labour and delivery, cardiac catheterisation lab and interventional radiology lab.

As part of this agreement, Cardinal Health will also use its recently introduced Preferred Choice ProgramSM to assist UHC, VHA and Provista members in improving product standardization and cost management. Through this program, Cardinal Health works with each customer to identify all products needed for a Presource kit, and then recommends clinically equivalent options for those products. By providing high-clinical-quality product alternatives, this program helps customers to reduce supply costs while maintaining their focus on patient and practitioner safety.

Cardinal Health works collaboratively with health care customers to use the Presource Process to assess unique procedure pack needs, design and deliver custom solutions to meet those needs and then measure results to adapt procedure pack solutions to address evolving requirements.

"We look forward to expanding our relationship with Novation by providing procedure pack solutions to thousands of UHC, VHA and Provista hospitals and surgery centres, nationwide," said Steve Inacker, president and general manager, Cardinal Health's Presource Products and Services business. "We're excited to deliver cost-effective solutions that will help Novation alliance members improve productivity and patient care."

Based in Irving, Texas, Novation is the leading health care contracting services company, delivering unmatched savings and value to nearly 2,500 members of VHA Inc. and the University HealthSystem Consortium (UHC), two national health care alliances and nearly 9,000 members of Provista, LLC (formerly known as Healthcare Purchasing Partners International, LLC (HPPI)).

Headquartered in Dublin, Ohio, Cardinal Health, Inc. is an $87 billion, global company serving the health care industry with products and services that help hospitals, physician offices and pharmacies reduce costs, improve safety, productivity and profitability, and deliver better care to patients.