Serving the Lone Star State, Texas-based Advanced Pain Care’s (APC) staff of nearly 600 team members offer specialties that include pain management, neurosurgery, rheumatology, orthopedics, behavioral health, addictionology and neurology. Advanced Pain Care operates 17 clinics, three surgery centers, three retail pharmacies, and a toxicology lab.

Providing over 1,800 surgeries per month in their surgery centers and continuing to expand operations with new facilities, APC keeps a close eye on balancing operational efficiencies with increased costs per case.

“Operating multiple facilities over a large geographic footprint presents many challenges. Combine that with our depth of subspecialties and the challenges only become more complex,” said Ganesh Ramoutar, chief procurement officer at Advanced Pain Care and Advanced Surgical Centers.

Working with Medline Sales Reps Amy Miranda and David May provided APC with a one-stop shop for all of the organization’s disposable medical supplies, as well as pricing, substitution and custom surgical packs. Operating multiple sites while being able to talk to one person and get solutions helps mitigate issues and allows APC to focus on patient care. Medline’s reps also aided APC in obtaining pricing through aggregation with their group purchasing organization (GPO) helping the organization find critical cost savings on their medical supplies.

“Our focus is providing the very best patient care to our patients and managing our operational efficiencies effectively so we can be successful in providing the very best patient care available. Our Medline reps are the backbone of our supply chain and an invaluable resource that help us navigate through this dynamic healthcare environment,” Ganesh continued.

Supply chain efficiency and resiliency

Having a consistent supply chain and product availability is critical for high-volume surgery centers. Due to their size and scope of operations, surgery centers not only need to manage their space but also their inventory to ensure they have what they need when patients arrive for their procedures. Turnover time is also a key metric for surgery centers as patients do not stay overnight at the facility.

To balance operational efficiencies as costs per case increase, APC has turned to standardization to find success. Standardization of products helps to reduce waste while also making care delivery more consistent. A big part of APC’s standardization strategy is the use of custom packs. Custom packs not only contain everything needed for a specific procedure, they come ready for use and help clinicians save time and valuable space within the supply room.

“As we’re experiencing a 20% increase in surgical volumes, getting everything required for a procedure into a single pack reduces turnover times in the OR and prep time for cases while removing the need to pick individual items from our clinician’s responsibilities, allowing them to focus on patient care,” said Ramoutar. “Custom packs also help us to save space in our supply rooms and space is always an issue. Medline is very well aware of what’s going on across the world in terms of product availability and is able to offer alternatives when critical items are not available, ensuring we can help our patients in their time of need.”

Custom packs are used in all of APC’s surgical centers. Medline works with APC’s materials management team to help identify the facilities and the selection of pack components to ensure they fit the organization’s needs.

Learn more about how Medline can help optimize surgery center operations.