The Hidden 26%: How Contract Fixes Unlocked Millions in Q3 Savings

You know that sinking feeling when you check an invoice and the numbers don't match what you negotiated? You spent weeks hammering out great contract terms with your GPO and wholesaler. Everything looked solid. Then the invoices start rolling in and—wait, why did this price jump? Why is Hospital A paying $500 more per unit than Hospital B for the exact same drug on the exact same contract?

This isn't bad luck or a one-off mistake. It's happening everywhere, all the time. Wholesaler data feeds don't update correctly. GPO rosters get out of sync. Contracts silently shift without anyone noticing. And suddenly, you're hemorrhaging money on pricing errors that shouldn't exist.

The frustrating part? Most organizations have no idea how much this is actually costing them. They catch a few errors here and there when someone has time to dig through invoices manually. But the rest? It just slips through.

So the real question isn't if this is happening to you. It's how much it's costing you—and what you're going to do about it.

A Record-Breaking Quarter Highlights a Hidden Problem

QuicksortRx customers achieved their highest combined savings to date in Q3 2025, with participating health systems collectively saving $31.7 million in just three months. This milestone brought our customers past an extraordinary threshold: $250 million in cumulative savings.

The average health system saved $615,000 during Q3 alone—a remarkable achievement that translated to an average return on investment of 18 times their annual QuicksortRx cost. One health system even achieved a staggering 93x ROI, demonstrating the transformative impact that systematic contract management can deliver.

But here's one major thing that caught our attention: 26% of the total—$8.29 million—came from a single category that many organizations have limited processes to monitor: contract fixes.

Contract fixes are corrections to pricing discrepancies that occur when the prices you're actually being charged don't match the prices you negotiated in your contracts. These aren't savings from switching to better contracts or finding alternative suppliers. These are savings from getting what you are already entitled to receive under your existing agreements.

Contract Misalignments: A Systemic Industry Problem

When pharmacy leaders hear about contract pricing errors, many initially assume these are isolated incidents—a few mistakes here and there that affect only a handful of medications. The data from our Q3 analysis tells a dramatically different story.

Across our network of 54 health systems in Q3, we identified and resolved 241 distinct contract fixes. But the distribution reveals an even more troubling pattern: Nearly 75% of our customers experienced at least one contract pricing issue during the quarter. This wasn't a problem affecting only a few outlier organizations—it was affecting three out of every four health systems we work with, regardless of their size or operational sophistication. These are often large, well-resourced health systems with experienced procurement teams and established vendor relationships. Yet they're still experiencing double-digit contract pricing errors every single quarter.

Even more striking: 15% of our customers had 10 or more contract fixes during Q3 alone. The financial impact of these contract fixes totaled $8.29 million in Q3—money that health systems would have lost if these discrepancies had gone undetected. 

Understanding the Root Causes

Contract pricing errors follow predictable patterns that emerge from the complex handoffs between GPOs, wholesalers, and health system procurement systems.

Wholesaler Contract Load Failures

The most common error occurs when GPO contract updates fail to load properly in wholesaler systems. Your GPO negotiates a new price and transmits it to your wholesaler—but somewhere in the process, the update fails. Maybe it's a data formatting issue, a system glitch, or simple human error. Either way, you keep getting billed at the old (higher) price, even though your contract says otherwise. Multiply this across dozens of medications and hundreds of updates per year, and the financial impact adds up fast.

GPO-Generated Conflicts

Less common but equally problematic: GPOs sometimes create conflicting pricing records through overlapping contracts, retroactive adjustments, or inconsistent data sent to different wholesalers. When confusion arises about which price applies, organizations typically end up paying the higher rate by default.

Three Types of Contract Fixes: From Detection to Diagnosis

Not all contract pricing issues are created equal. At QuicksortRx, we've identified three distinct categories of contract fixes, each requiring different analytical approaches and delivering different types of value.

1. Price Parity Issues

Price parity issues occur when different facilities within the same health system pay different prices for the same medication under the same contract. This commonly happens in large integrated delivery networks where multiple hospitals maintain separate purchasing accounts with wholesalers.

Hospital A in your system receives a contracted price of $100 for a medication, while Hospital B—with the same contract and GPO affiliation—is charged $125. One hospital systematically overpays by 25% due to an unnoticed contract load error.

Price parity corrections ensure all entities under one health system pay the same rates, often delivering substantial savings by correcting ongoing overpayments that would continue indefinitely.

2. Contract Validations

Contract validations confirm that your billed prices align with trusted authoritative sources—typically GPO-provided pricing lists or, for 340B-eligible entities, the Apexus 340B pricing file.

These validations catch incorrect price increases before they compound over time. When a wholesaler implements an unsupported price increase, contract validation flags the discrepancy and triggers correction, preventing you from establishing a new, higher baseline price.

3. Contract Change Verification (The QuicksortRx Differentiator)

This is where QuicksortRx delivers diagnostic insights most tools can't provide. Contract change verification doesn't just detect that a price changed—it identifies why, what contract you've moved to (or fallen off from), and exactly how much the shift costs you.

Most analytics tools flag price increases and stop there. QuicksortRx goes further: it detects when you've silently shifted from your intended contract to an unintended local contract, calculates the exact financial impact based on your volumes, identifies who to contact for resolution, and provides documentation to request retroactive credits.

This diagnostic capability separates comprehensive contract management from simple price monitoring. Many tools tell you something has changed. QuicksortRx tells you what changed, why it changed, and how to fix it.

Real Examples from the Field

The true impact of systematic contract management becomes clear when you examine specific examples from Q3 2025. These cases illustrate both the scale of individual contract issues and the diversity of problems that QuicksortRx helps customers solve.

A $181k Price Parity Issue

A Southeast academic health system discovered significant pricing discrepancies across its facilities due to contract rostering errors that initially seemed insignificant. These price parity issues disproportionately affected high-cost specialty medications, creating substantial financial losses that went undetected through traditional procurement processes. By implementing QuicksortRx's analytics platform, the health system gained visibility into these inconsistencies and systematically corrected the rostering errors with their wholesaler. In just Q3 alone, the health system recovered $181,463, with total recoveries exceeding $218,000 since first addressing the issue. This case demonstrates how seemingly minor administrative errors can compound into major financial impacts, particularly for high-cost therapeutic categories.

Example of Contract Validation: Jemperli 340B Contract Recovery

A multi-state non-profit health system spanning more than 50 hospitals experienced an unexpected disruption when their 340B pricing for Jemperli—a high-cost oncology medication—was inadvertently removed from their wholesaler system. Without access to discounted 340B pricing, the health system was charged significantly higher WAC prices during the gap period. After several weeks of communication to reload the contract, QuicksortRx helped identify the full scope of the financial impact and compile documentation of all impacted purchases. The health system ultimately recovered $256,000 in overcharges. This case illustrates the critical importance of continuous contract monitoring and the significant financial risk that even temporary contract lapses can create.

Systematic Pricing Error Identification: $164,000 Claimed

A large Midwestern health system operating over 3,000 beds across 14 hospitals faced a systemic pricing issue when 54 different NDCs experienced gaps in their 340B contract pricing during the Q3-to-Q4 transition, resulting in full WAC pricing charges instead of contracted rates. QuicksortRx identified all affected NDCs at the beginning of the quarter and immediately flagged them to the wholesaler. The QuicksortRx team then tracked contract loading status and compiled every invoice where off-contract pricing occurred during the gap period. By managing the administrative burden, QuicksortRx submitted a comprehensive contract audit totaling $164,000 to the wholesaler. This case shows how QuicksortRx catches systematic pricing errors during vulnerable transition periods and manages recovery from identification through resolution.

The Pattern Across Examples

What stands out across these examples is the diversity of the organizations affected and the types of contract issues identified. These are some of the nation's most respected health systems, with well-staffed procurement departments and established vendor relationships. The fact that contract pricing issues affect even the largest organizations underscores the systemic nature of the problem and the need for automated, continuous monitoring to catch issues that inevitably slip through manual oversight.

The QuicksortRx Difference For Contract Fixes

Technology Powered by Expert Human Support

Contract pricing problems require more than software—they demand the right combination of sophisticated analytics and hands-on expertise. QuicksortRx delivers both. Our platform continuously monitors your pricing data, automatically verifying it against active contracts and flagging potential fall-offs in near real-time. The system tracks thousands of daily price changes across your formulary, distinguishing between legitimate adjustments and compliance issues while maintaining comprehensive pricing history for trend analysis.

But technology alone can't resolve discrepancies or recover overcharges. That's where our customer success team steps in. When our platform identifies a pricing issue, our CS experts take ownership of the entire resolution process: preparing documentation, submitting correction requests to wholesalers and GPOs, following up persistently, verifying corrections, and ensuring you receive credits for past overcharges. We handle the administrative burden that typically consumes hours of your procurement team's time each week.

This integration of automated monitoring and expert intervention transforms contract fixes from a procurement headache into systematic value generation. We become an extension of your team—combining our platform's vigilance with human expertise in contract management, wholesaler relations, and GPO structures that complements your internal pharmacy knowledge.

Savings in Both Dollars and Time

QuicksortRx delivers value beyond direct financial recovery. Customers report that freed procurement time—no longer spent manually tracking discrepancies and chasing corrections—is just as valuable as dollars recovered. This capacity allows procurement professionals to focus on strategic initiatives: negotiating better contracts, evaluating therapeutic alternatives, and improving pharmacy operations.

The Tip of the Iceberg: What Contract Fixes Reveal About Pharmacy Procurement

Q3's $8.29 million in contract fix savings—26% of QuicksortRx customers' total quarterly savings—represents just the visible portion of broader pricing alignment opportunities. These contract fixes are the most straightforward savings category: you have a contract, you're not getting the contracted price, and once corrected, the financial impact is immediate and measurable.

But consider what these fixes reveal about hidden opportunities. If three-quarters of health systems have contract pricing errors each quarter, what other inefficiencies exist? How many therapeutic alternatives go unevaluated because teams chase pricing discrepancies? How many better contract opportunities are missed due to lack of time or data for comprehensive market analysis?

The Hidden Cost of Manual Contract Management

Manual contract management creates opportunity costs throughout your organization. It delays cost reduction initiatives, reduces capacity for strategic vendor negotiations, and prevents proactive approaches to pharmacy spend management.

A Question for Pharmacy Leaders

How much time does your procurement team spend chasing contract updates manually? Hours each week comparing invoices against contract terms, documenting discrepancies, submitting corrections, and following up with wholesalers?

Imagine redirecting that time toward strategic initiatives: negotiating better terms, identifying therapeutic alternatives, implementing cost reduction programs, or thoroughly evaluating major purchasing decisions. This is the transformation systematic contract management enables.

Q3 results demonstrate that contract pricing errors aren't rare or random—they're a predictable, systematic problem affecting health systems of every size. The question isn't whether your organization is losing money to contract misalignments. It's how much you're losing, and whether you'll continue accepting these losses as unavoidable.

Take the Next Step

If your health system is ready to stop leaving money on the table and start systematically capturing savings you've already negotiated, see QuicksortRx in action. We'll show you how our platform identifies pricing issues specific to your organization and how our experts handle resolution from detection through final credit.

Request a demo to discover your potential savings through systematic contract management—and how much time your team could redirect toward strategic initiatives. Because in an industry where every dollar matters, receiving the prices you negotiated isn't just good practice—it's a responsibility.

See the full Q3 2025 report here.