1. Keep supplies in short stock. If you want to cut costs and prevent waste, look at your supply shelf and make sure you don’t have unnecessary supplies sitting around. “We have a very small owned inventory, and everything is in very, very short stock,” says Tammy Burnett, administrator of The Plastic Surgical Center in Flowood, Miss. “We order quickly and we don’t use supplies when they’re not needed.” She says her staff members are vigilant about preventing waste: Before they start a procedure, they look at every supply involved to make sure it’s necessary. “If they’re looking at a suture, our staff are involved enough to say, ‘No, we need this link because it’s longer and we’ll pay less for it than we would for several shorter ones’,” she says.
David Kelly, administrator of Samaritan North Surgery Center in Dayton, Ohio, says most centers have supplies that are rarely used. “Get rid of the things that don’t add any value,” he says.
2. Make your staff members supply experts. Ms. Burnett says her center keeps supply costs down by incentivizing staff members with a shared year-end bonus. Every staff member, regardless of stature or tenure, shares equally in a bonus based on the center’s year-end profit, meaning that staff members can enjoy the financial results of their hard work. To make sure her staff can make smart decisions about supply purchasing, Ms. Burnett holds regular contests where staff members have to guess how much a supply is worth. Whoever gets the closest wins a prize, and eventually the staff members learn which supplies are good values.
An in-depth knowledge of supplies benefits Cypress Surgery Center when staff members have to make decisions about purchasing. “They’re not going to skimp on quality, but they’re not going to let the rep du jour feed them supplies [we don’t need],” Ms. Burnett says.
3. Consider building a relationship with a hospital. A partnership with a hospital can give an ASC access to supplies and purchasing power to negotiate lower supply costs. “Our relationship with the hospital means they have the same supplies,” says Lynda Simon, administrator of St. John’s Clinic: Head and Neck Surgery in Springfield, Mo. “If they’re low on something, we can share, and if we’re low on something, they can share.” She adds, “Because all the purchasing goes through the system, that gives you a little bit of extra push because the hospital is working on your behalf to get costs down as low as they can.”
Learn how to cut costs through staffing decisions.
