The Reading Hospital and Medical Center Joins Mid-Atlantic Alliance

Thursday, August 02, 2012

The Reading Hospital and Medical Center is the newest member of a non-profit consortium linking nearly 100 hospitals throughout the Mid-Atlantic region in order to improve medical resources while sharing costs.  By employing group purchasing power as a strategy, the group is able to supply member medical facilities with the latest medical information, research, journals and databases.

The Group Licensing Initiative formed 10 years ago under the umbrella organization Health Sciences Library Association of New Jersey (HSLANJ) and is known as the first consortium of its kind in the nation.

The arrangement offers access to current, high-quality electronic resources in the form of medical journals, books, and databases; and the most cost-effective pricing available thanks to the organization’s leverage of group purchasing strategy.  Members currently represent hospitals and medical facilities in Delaware, New Jersey, New York, and Pennsylvania.

Current trends are moving hospital libraries away from traditional hard-copy materials, toward electronic resources which are accessible 24/7 from point-of-care bedside to remote access, encouraging wider usage by medical staff.

This project has been funded in whole or in part with Federal funds from the National Library of Medicine, National Institutes of Health, Department of Health and Human Services, under Contract No. HHS-N-276-2011-00003-C with the University of Pittsburgh, Health Sciences Library System.