To keep you on track this year, here are some savings opportunities that can help your budget go further. We’re all looking for ways to save and get more from the resources we have. The good news is: you can reduce some costs associated with respiratory equipment management. Here are three areas to find savings and help stay on budget:
- Savings Opportunities in Total Cost of Service (TCOS)
Many providers only look at the cost of repairs, ignoring the significant cost of equipment management before and after the repairs. For example, most providers estimate the cost of sending a truck to swap out a defective unit at over $100. Therefore, paying a little more to have your device thoroughly made over with an extended warranty could save this $100 fee and improve patient satisfaction (not to mention the administrative time involved in dispatching the truck!) Are you sending equipment to the OEM for service? Another area to look at is the time involved in getting RMAs from the OEMs. Sure, some are fast, some provide a website to get an RMA, but others take hours or longer. Every hour of delay costs you money.Speaking of time, are you calculating the cost of turn-around time from your vendors? As it relates to asset utilization, the faster the turn, the sooner your capital is working for you. This time factor converts to a hidden cost of capital.Third-party freight errors and delays also cost money and time. At Quality Biomedical, we design and implement logistics programs to save both. We understand that fast turnaround time improves business outcomes. Our ISO 9001 quality systems provide a consistent process and our national network—with extended logistics pickup and delivery services—reduces transit time and cost.
In addition, our QConnect equipment management portal delivers dashboard visibility to all your assets. We make it easy to generate RMAs, approve estimates, and review service histories. Check out our latest innovation to improve workflow.
- Savings Opportunities in Vendor Reduction
How many different vendors are you working with? The more vendors, the more problems in purchasing, accounting, invoicing, receiving, wrong parts, incorrect invoices, incorrect purchase orders, return shipments, lost shipments, shipping expense, and more. Most companies find economies of scale and cost savings when they reduce the number of vendors they work with.
Quality Biomedical is a one-stop managed services solution. We manage the repair, warehousing , and logistics of your respiratory equipment— all through the intelligence of our proprietary cloud-based QConnect platform. This means medical equipment gets where it’s needed when it’s needed, while also delivering economies of scale that save money and make life easier for OEMs, HMEs, LTACs, and other healthcare providers. - Savings Opportunities in Shifting from DIY to Outsourcing
If you are servicing equipment in-house, have you measured ALL the costs involved? This includes: employees’ salaries, training and benefits; and the extra overhead costs such as building space, utilities, management and administrative time? You should also factor the opportunity cost of that capital – in other words, could you make more money using those resources for revenue-generating activities? Here is a case study about the hidden costs of DIY respiratory equipment service.The truth is, most companies are losing money doing service in-house and don’t realize it. For example, while it’s tempting to think you’re saving money by servicing oxygen concentrators in-house, it’s easy to fail to account for the plethora of administrative tasks required to support that effort.- It begins with purchase orders for parts, adding work to your purchasing department. (This assumes you have processes in place to know what parts to order, of course.)
- Oftentimes shipments are lost, delayed, or the wrong part is shipped; resulting in more time to track and fix issues.
- Companies also often overlook the cost of inbound freight and outbound freight as they return defective or incorrect parts.
- The accounting department must pay invoices and bear the administrative hassle involved with incorrect invoices, incorrect number of units, taxes, etc.
- Next, the receiving department must receive the parts properly, and once stocked, they must then be pulled and given to the BioMed technician.
- Periodically an audit must be conducted to determine proper inventory levels. 99% of the time shrinkage and other related inventory problems are found that cost the company thousands of dollars.
- And last, the time cost of training technicians to service the units properly is often overlooked. Technicians often leave after a short period of time and you must then have to retrain others. This requires significant management and administrative time, and reduces production during their “ramp-up” phase.
As you can see, in-house servicing of just your oxygen concentrators is costlier than you probably imagined. The good news is that Quality Biomedical has helped many organizations just like yours find ways get the most from their budgets. Set up a meeting with us. We know exactly where to look to uncover savings opportunities. We’d be happy to see what benefits we could bring to your budget this year.
