Surgical Group Rapidly Growing and Scaling with Procurement Partners Solution

Challenge: Procurement and Inventory for a Quickly Expanding Healthcare Company’s New Facility 

As a leader in healthcare procurement software, Procurement Partners has honed our service by combining granular expertise with responsiveness and an attentive ear to the needs of our ever-growing client base. Solara Surgical Partners is an example of our great customer success stories: we’ve helped them gain alignment in inventory, data, and customized procurement categories as they have undertaken a period of expansion.  

Solara Surgical Partners, based in Oklahoma City and Southlake, Texas, serves in partnership, development, and operations management for Ambulatory Surgical Centers (ASC), hospitals, urgent cares, and two primary care facilities with related expertise in mobile unit care and telemedicine.  

Solara Surgical Partners seeks to expand community access to value-based healthcare service alternatives within a broad range of specialties by offering safe, efficient, and consumer-centric healthcare services. Solara pursues its goals through strong company values of relationships, ethical excellence, and expertise.

As a healthcare management and development company such as Solara Surgical Partners grows and evolves, so do its procurement challenges. With a widening range of services and many upcoming partnerships, the company faces demands that are both complex and ever-evolving.  

Now the company is opening Jackson Heart and Vascular Center in Jackson, Mississippi. While Solara Surgical Partners has used Procurement Partners procure-to-pay software in existing facilities, this is the first time it has utilized P2P automation from the ground up in supplying and opening a new facility. 

In a fast-moving healthcare industry, companies need to be able to hit the ground running with accurate inventory, insightful reporting, and easy-to-use ordering. Procurement Partners offers combined expert software with human experts to help make it happen.  

Solutions:  Automation for Accurate, Flexible, and Accountable Inventory  

Solara Surgical Partners’ Director of Corporate Procurement, Jeff Bibb, brings more than three decades of healthcare experience to his role. He singles out accountable inventory, data, and reporting as elements that he needs to be successful, using the Procurement Partners Hybrent solution. Supplying an all-new facility is a complex task, but software automation eliminates inefficiencies and guesswork.  

“It’s been a great process,” Jeff says about stocking and tracking inventory for the facility. He notes that the first surgical cases have been performed at Jackson Heart and Vascular, with the facility’s Medicare license imminent. “Once we get our Medicare number, the door is really going to open and we’re going to get very, very busy.” 

Jeff has been working with a staffer at Jackson named Melanie who has been using Hybrent for the first time. “She is starting to use the system to do orders, getting very familiar with it,” he says “It’s going very well. She is going in and tweaking the system for the verbiage that she wants. She was really pleased with the upload that we did.” 

Prior to opening, Jackson Heart and Vascular Center received a substantial amount of demo supply from long-time vendors. While any healthcare facility would welcome this, the influx of supplies would have been overwhelming to track without software automation.  

“We received more than $20,000 worth of free products between all our vendors,” Jeff says. “Melanie was able to easily scan it all in. She scanned in all the products and deducted what we used. So, what I have on the shelf is truly what I have in the building.”  

Throughout the process of getting Jackson Heart and Vascular stocked and opened, Jeff has been in continual communication with Procurement Partners staff, making sure that the crucial mission of the facility would be fully supported by the procurement team.  

“Procurement Partners is always a text or phone call away or an email away,” says Jeff. “My rep has been extremely helpful. She knows me and we spend a lot of time talking. She knows my end goals with the center.” 

Results: A Working Model for More Facility Openings Soon 

Jeff notes that, while the Jackson Heart and Vascular opening has gone well, thanks to the Hybrent team and his meticulous work in preparation, there is no time to rest. Solara Surgical Partners will have more expansion on deck soon.  

“I am constantly trying to refine this process so that it’s easier and easier,” Jeff says. “Jackson Heart and Vascular was my first upload with Hybrent. Now we’re going to try to use it to its full potential. We’re going to activate notifications for when things are off contract. We are using the invoicing piece. We’re going to do all of it.” 

Jeff notes how the features of P2P automation with a Procurement Partners’ solution make it possible to be proactive across the end-to-end from ordering to invoice and to be resilient against seasonal supply chain disruptions and other challenges.  

“What I really love is the fact that we can see the invoices as they start coming in. I love the back-order notifications,” he says. “And as we move into the winter weather comes the stuff we’re trying to forecast. We are going to need to order extra items.” 

Looking ahead, Jeff also points to the attention paid to reporting functions as an invaluable tool across the procure-to-pay process. In fact, he wants to leverage what’s already there for innovative ideas.  

“Hybrent has a lot of great reports,” he says. “Here’s our top ten supplies. Here’s our top ten vendors. Here’s our PO reconciliations. Here is what’s on backorder. We’ve already got the reports in there, but I am hoping to build with them (Procurement Partners) to make one custom report that encompasses all of it. I want to customize reports so that my materials personnel can just print off those reports and then sit down with any administrator.”  

With Procurement Partners automated software makes ordering easy, keeps inventory transparent, and makes AP efficient and accountable. In his crucial role with Solara Surgical Partners, Jeff sees wonderful things ahead with this future partnership.  

“I am continually coaching each center about using Hybrent, and the centers are becoming very proficient. They’re getting really good at it,” Jeff says. “And we are going to get even more in depth. We want to use this system to its full potential. I think, really, the sky’s the limit.”