When the cost-of-sale went down for Oakworks, so did the price for Kettering. “This kept our cost-of-sale down and eliminated waste,” said Brian Emmer, VP of Sales at Oakworks. “And this turned into better pricing for the hospital.”

In this case the organizations cut enough waste that the hospital doubled their order. That’s disruption in action.



Saving money on routine equipment purchases
Mt. Graham Regional Medical Center in Stafford, Arizona is nearly three hours from the nearest major airport. This makes it expensive for suppliers to send a team out for demos and meetings, especially if you’re a small business.

Harloff, a made-in-the-USA small business manufacturer of medical carts, was able to keep sales costs in check by working with the Mt. Graham team online. Late last year the director of emergency services and the supply chain director at the hospital needed to jointly evaluate cast carts. Although the equipment itself is not that complicated, selling anything to a hospital is.

Mt. Graham has recently begun moving equipment research and quote gathering online. This saves time for both suppliers and the hospital team, and in this case the Harloff team was able to fully collaborate and coordinate the purchase of orthopedic casting and splinting carts online.

The result? A lower cost-of-sale for Harloff and a lower cost-of-acquisition for Mt. Graham.

“Make it easy”
James Waldrop, controller at Bryton Corporation, another made-in-the-USA small business manufacturer, had never before worked with Granville Health System, before collaborating on the OpenMarkets Exchange.

“Granville made it easy for us to work with them,” said Waldrop. “Zeb Barnette, (the hospital’s clinical value analysis expert) was very responsive to working with us online. We received his communication and sent back our most competitive pricing in a streamlined way. It worked for him and it worked for us. We cut out waste together.”

James is referring to a recent transaction between the two organizations for an OR hand table. Barnette and the Granville team knew they had a need for the table and wanted to vet multiple suppliers in an easy way. Instead of calling together a vendor fair and multiple product demos, they simply reached out on the Exchange to several suppliers at once. STERIS, Ganim Medical, Alimed and others were competing side-by-side with Bryton.

After being pushed together online, the Bryton and Granville teams jumped on the phone to iron out the final details. The end result was a quicker, more efficient transaction.


About the Author: Tom Derrick is a co-founder and senior vice president of OpenMarkets. He may be reached at tderrick@openmarketshealth.com

Back to HCB News

Business Affairs Homepage