Food Hygiene
Health & Safety
Safeguarding
First Aid
Business Skills
Personal Development
Medical equipment and supplies procurement is part of the essential operations in medical institutions and organizations.
However, it’s a cost-intensive task for many due to the value high-quality medical equipment and supplies already have. It’s a logistical pay-off care practitioners know well.
Saving on supplies and medical equipment can counter the high costs involved in procurement planning processes, including purchasing and user training.
But how do you do that without sacrificing quality?
This article lists and discusses how your organization can save on medical equipment and supplies:
1. Purchasing Medical Equipment In Bulk
Bulk equipment and supplies purchases let you spend less than you would with price-per-unit costs.
Furthermore, working with professional distributors of healthcare supplies guarantees lower prices for bulky purchases. They may do this through volume discounts, a fixed percentage of the total purchase price.
However, making a few mistakes when purchasing in bulk is typical. There’s a risk of taking quantity over quality, which means getting equipment unfit for your needs.
When purchasing medical equipment and supplies in bulk, your supplier may entice you with subpar-quality supplies due to the promise of getting more. It always helps to ensure that the quality of medical supplies fits your organizational needs to avoid risks when you use them.
2. Investing In Preventative Maintenance
Preventative maintenance is a practice that helps prolong your medical supplies and equipment lifespans. It also helps minimize costly repairs and replacements that may get you back to your supplier, spending more than you’ve budgeted.
Part of preventative maintenance is investing in employee training to handle equipment with care.
It’d help to train the personnel responsible for emergency assistance on basic first aid tips to do this. It also applies to handling personal protective equipment (PPE) to prevent it from quickly wearing out.
Consider scheduling regular repairs and servicing in your organizational timeline, as well. It helps keep your medical equipment in perfect condition for extensive periods.
3. Negotiating Lower Prices
Suppose you’re not purchasing your medical equipment and supplies in bulk and don’t qualify for volume discounts. In that case, you can still negotiate better rates directly.
While vendors have set prices for different profit margins they need to meet, they can compromise a little to satisfy their long-term clients. The prices they offer you can go a little lower if you stick to a specific offer, especially when negotiating with a familiar supplier.
Below are helpful tips for negotiating prices when purchasing medical equipment and supplies.
- Request multiple quotes: You can contact several suppliers for various quotes if you don’t have a specific vendor in mind. Having several can make it easier to find more affordable options.
- Highlight your needs: You can still talk to your supplier about how essential the medical equipment and supplies are to you and why you need to acquire them. An understanding supplier can slash the prices a little if they’re willing.
- Be willing to walk away: Not arrogantly. But you should be ready to walk away when negotiations don’t seem to go anywhere. That shifts control to your side, allowing you to easily sway the conversation to favor your quoted prices.
You can lower costs and save on purchasing medical equipment and supplies if you ask for a price slash. However, it helps if you have a working strategy for accomplishing that. These steps are a good start.
Paediatric First Aid Training
Being able to help a child in distress or pain is an especially admirable talent and one that all parents or child-minders should ideally know.
4. Renting Medical Equipment
If this method is cheaper, you could still rent your medical equipment and supplies.
Still, it’s best to consider the upfront costs involved, the frequency of equipment use, and whether or not you will need it for a long time.
You should also know that you’ll be responsible for maintaining and repairing such equipment when damaged in your care, which is a factor you shouldn’t ignore.
If renting equipment is more practical than purchasing it, you shouldn’t hesitate. However, please compare your options and decide which, between buying and renting your diagnostic tools, medical equipment, and supplies, truly saves costs in the long term.
5. Seeking Out Grants Or Other Funding Opportunities
You can still seek grants or leverage other funding opportunities to offset the costs of medical equipment and supplies.
Grants are non-contracted funds you receive from well-wishers and people of good faith to help your organization advance your medical services. The government may offer these to subsidize equipment and supplies procurement costs, which you should leverage.
6. Using Group Purchasing Organizations (GPOs)
GPOs are entities that take advantage of the bulk and collective buying power of several healthcare organizations for more discounted processes on medical supplies.
Ideally, these organizations aggregate the equipment and supply volume from their members. They then place orders on vendors offering these supplies after negotiating and agreeing on prices on their behalf.
These GPOs tend to have a higher success rate in price negotiations, making them a solid choice. While you may have to pay a nominal fee for a percentage of the savings generated from the negotiated prices, the price cuts you get are worthwhile.
Working with GPOs also helps you save on negotiation time, enabling you to focus on other parts of your organization that need attention.
7. Doing Comparison Shopping
This technique helps you gauge prices from various vendors, making it easier to find more affordable ones. That follows doing rigorous research on suitable vendors and interviewing each or reviewing their price quotes.
The good thing about this approach is that it prevents you from settling on promising initial choices that aren’t in the long run. You have to strike a delicate balance between affordability and reliability. The last thing you want as a medical organization is to harm your patients due to ‘cheap’ equipment.
Also, you can get lower prices if you search through a wider area of supply than basing around your local area.
There Are Always Options
If you take small, deliberate steps, your organization can save on medical equipment and supplies costs. But while aiming to save on costs, it’s best to ensure you don’t compromise on quality. Go through as many options as possible and get referrals from those who get good prices.
