Challenge: Flying Without a Map: A Growing Outpatient Center Group with No Systems for Ordering, Inventory, and Accounts Payable
As a leader in healthcare procurement software, Procurement Partners has honed our service by combining our human experts with expert automation solutions. We serve our ever-growing client base with responsiveness and passionate attentiveness to their varied needs across the continuum of care.
ACV Centers is one of our great customer success stories. Procurement Partners has helped them save money and free up staff time for their core mission of patient care, even as they have expanded and opened new facilities. As ACV Centers have grown, we have been there to support accountability and transparency across their procure-to-pay processes.
With Outpatient Centers in Grand Rapids, MI; Lansing, MI, and Las Vegas, NV, ACV Centers’ team of interventional cardiologists and vascular surgeons provides highly personalized care. ACV provides comprehensive Cardiac Care and Vascular Arterial and Vein Care with a special concentration on treating Coronary Artery Disease (CAD), Peripheral Artery Disease (PAD) and the complications of Critical Limb Ischemia (CLI).
ACV Centers works with patients who have received challenging diagnoses, with statistical outcomes that can be alarming. Their clinicians and staff focus on compassionate healing, working with patients’ primary care doctors, wound care specialists, podiatrists, and/or other cardiovascular specialists to treat and prevent cardiovascular diseases.
Like many healthcare organizations, ACV Centers faced significant challenges in their purchasing, inventory, and payment and billing processes that were costing time and money. Their immediate challenges were:
- The lack of an organized inventory system.
- No centralized invoices for supplies and services.
- Large-scale costs in workforce hours and attention devoted to manual processes.
- Major financial waste from expired and excess supplies.
ACV wasn’t alone in the healthcare industry in needing help across the procure-to-pay process. Today they have found a better way.
Solutions: Tackling the Problem: Implementing Procure-to-Pay Software Automation with Trusted, Expert Partners
When ACV Director of Radiology Nathan Sheridan joined ACV about five years ago, the healthcare organization was composed of its Grand Rapids and Lansing sites. One thing Nathan noticed right away was a lack of structure around inventory and purchasing.
“When I started, there was no inventory system,” Nathan says.
Nathan worked on the clinical side of operations for his first couple of years with ACV, then added inventory, contract management, and invoicing responsibilities to his plate. By this point, ACV had a third clinic on the way.
For Nathan, it was clear that he needed to find a solution for the inefficient, paper-based workflows and processes that he knew were draining time and money from his organization. Not knowing the landscape of automated solutions, he reached out to his representative at Medline, who suggested Procurement Partners’ Hybrent comprehensive inventory and procurement management system.
After watching and learning from Procurement Partners demos, Nathan saw a clear path to accountability and time and cost savings for ACV.
“I said: we have to do this,” Nathan says, remembering what he told clinical and administrative staff about learning about Hybrent. “Not doing this is not an option, especially with our growth. And after we got our first two locations set up with Hybrent, everyone fell in love with it within the first week.”
Smooth implementation was crucial for ACV, a growing company that couldn’t tolerate any interruptions or shortfalls in supplies and goods as it transferred over to automated processes. This is where Procurement Partners experts, with their background in healthcare and passion for customer satisfaction, made sure there were no costly setbacks.
“They made the implementation pretty much effortless on my end,” Nathan says. “The communication was always wide open, so implementation was a breeze”.
Very quickly things began to change for Nathan and ACV across the procure-to-pay process. The effects rippled throughout the organization.
“It was a breath of fresh air,” Nathan explains. “It made everyone more relaxed.”
Results: Reaping the Benefits: Saving Money, Time, and Freeing Up Resources to Deliver on ACV’s Caregiving Mission
Procurement Partners’ Hybrent automated software solution has put Nathan and ACV in a position to save time and money through accurate inventory, invoicing, and accounts payable, freeing up time for staff to deliver on the organization’s critical belief in patient care and second chances.
Since partnering with us, ACV has:
Eliminated Wasteful Spending. “Not having any tangible way to track loss revenue from expired products was affecting our day to day,” Nathan says. “Just at one location, we probably had at least $15,000 to $20,000 worth of expired product, excess product, or product that was ordered accidentally.”
Drastically Cut Staff Time Spent Dealing with Manual Processes. “Before, it would take up half my work week, just going through packing slips and invoices and matching things up,” explains Nathan. “It’s all computerized now. It was life changing.”
Done Away with Manual Processes. “It’s all about manpower and the hours that are saved,” Nathan says. “We don’t have the old banker’s boxes full of printed out invoices matched up with packing slips anymore. From that moment on, I’ve been a true believer in Hybrent.”
Made Ordering from Vendors and Suppliers a Breeze.“With all of the specialty devices we order, we have about 30 or 40 different vendors that we buy through,” says Nathan. “Having an automated way to manage all of them, having a list of them and knowing easily what’s in their catalogues is worth its weight in gold.”
Maximized Vendor and Supplier Relationships. “Hybrent makes it super easy to add new vendors,” Nathan says. “And I like the fact that you’re able to control who the order gets sent to. We have very close personal relationships with a lot of our reps. That level of customization is noticeable, and it’s in all areas of Hybrent.”
Our partnership with Nathan and ACV has been a success story that is a source of pride for everyone involved. Nathan’s role in procure-to-pay has been tremendously impressive, coming from his expert clinical background and bringing passion and ingenuity to inventory and payment management—becoming an expert in his own right without having a history in procurement.
Providing solutions and following through on our commitments is our greatest passion, and we look forward to other healthcare organizations joining us. We love making your challenges today into tomorrow’s success story.
About Procurement Partners
Procurement Partners provides the only healthcare-focused procurement, inventory management, and AP automation platform for administrators and clinical providers across the continuum of care. Procurement Partners procure-to-pay solutions maximize financial health and staff well-being, streamlining and redirecting time toward patient and resident care. Procurement Partners offers the only all-in-one procure-to-pay platforms that provide the freedom to buy from any supplier, through any GPO contracts, with open integration to any financial and other operational systems.