Q: What is the biggest challenge Triangle Endoscopy faces when ordering supplies?
John Lytle: It sounds kind of silly, but making sure you coordinate your shipping times to the actual need of supplies. Most facilities don’t have room for extra supplies, and buying materials and keeping it on the shelf affects cash flow. Even Walmart has up-to-the-minute inventory because they don’t want massive amounts of supplies in the back. Our surgery center wants to replace supplies when we need it and we don’t have a lot of room to replace it, so we have to be careful.
Q: What practices have been implemented to ensure supplies are correctly anticipated and ordered in a timely manner?
JL: We try to do inventory over a month period. Then you know how much of any supply you’re going to use. It’s has to do with coordinating and developing a system. We have someone going through inventory of what we have and what we’re going to need. Another person orders the supplies, but they work as a team to keep the supply chain moving. Communication is key. We try to monitor the supplies as closely as we can to maintain rotation flow. Most of the time it works. Our biggest concern even after all that is when there’s a shortage of an item, and we have to find something that will substitute for it.
Q: What does Triangle Endoscopy do in response to situations where a shipment of supplies doesn’t come in on time because of a shortage?
JL: I actually just had a shipment of a drug we use for sedation that was supposed to be received overnight, but instead it took two days to get here. So I ran out and I had to buy it at a significant difference in price. The cost of buying medication in even small amounts from a pharmacy is significantly more than a warehouse where they make the drug.
I’ve learned over time to always have a backup plan. Other surgery centers help each other out. I’ve borrowed from the hospital, and they’ve borrowed from me. The medical community works pretty well together because we all understand that somebody’s going to need some help sometimes. The biggest goal is to make sure patients are taken care of.
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