ASC on modern frontier partners with Medline and Hybrent to wrangle complex procurement challenges

Located on the modern frontier, Oklahoma city-based OneCore Health (OneCore) is a recognized outcome-based provider that facilitates best-in-class surgical outcomes for patients by harmonizing safety, efficiency, service excellence, and treatment effectiveness.

As OneCore looked to evolve its practice to improve patient care, the organization undertook an operational shift in its procurement processes. Because of the changes that were needed, OneCore began to reevaluate its relationships with its suppliers, purchasing vendors, group purchasing organization (GPO), and procurement software providers.

Emily Frazier, who previously worked as a scrub tech for 12 years, is OneCore’s supply chain manager. She oversees the procurement process in collaboration with the organization’s purchasing clerk.

“As a supply chain manager, this was a perfect storm for our organization that had implications across our operations,” said Frazier. “While our Medline rep was new to our account, she quickly realized our organization needed help and went the extra mile to empower me to take over the account in a proactive way.”

As OneCore began evaluating potential software systems to better manage their procurement, they realized that they needed an independent system that enabled them to go paperless with the flexibility to integrate with the organization’s accounts payable (AP) system to streamline purchase order (PO) and invoice reconciliation while enabling the organization to maintain timely payments to vendors. Ordering through OneCore’s electronic medical record (EMR) system was not an option because the organization relied on paper documents and did not provide patients with ongoing care.

“Our existing system made it time-consuming to correct POs or order items because we were required to email our procurement vendor and field questions via email regarding our orders in what often turned into multi-day exchanges before an order was placed or corrected,” Frazier continued.

Through Medline, OneCore was able to set up a demo to learn about the Hybrent procurement software system. While it seemed too good to be true at the outset, selecting Hybrent laid the foundation for OneCore to successfully evolve its procurement processes.

“Before we switched to Hybrent, I had little control over our procurement processes,” said Frazier. “Once we switched, we were able to reduce the time we spent managing purchases, including cutting our email traffic by two-thirds.”

Through the relationship with Medline, OneCore was able to secure cost-effective pricing for the Hybrent system while gaining access to accounts payable integration as well as purchasing orders and invoice reconciliation. Hybrent gave Emily and her team at OneCore the ability to make changes within their system, view product descriptions, and easily place orders.

“Anything I can get through Medline is going to be better priced than anywhere else, including my supplies, instruments, and capital equipment like liposuction machines or portable vital sign monitors,” said Frazier. “Pretty much anything you come and see in my hospital; most of it’s from Medline because of the convenience the relationship provides. For example, on one order I took a snapshot of a handwritten list of instruments that the sterile processing department (SPD) wanted me to order. The list included just basic descriptions and no item numbers. I texted it to our Medline Rep in the morning and had a quote later in the afternoon.”

GPO Conversion
When OneCore began their GPO conversion, Medline set up a special projects team that held weekly phone conferences to make sure that contracts were being connected to the items that they currently purchased.

The Medline team also found creative solutions to OneCore’s unique needs as a healthcare organization operating multiple locations. In one instance, OneCore’s ADA orthopedic clinic in a small town in Oklahoma was ordering under the organization’s main account number but had no shipping address and would not meet the order minimum on most orders.

To ensure this facility could obtain the supplies they needed, the Medline team set up OneCore’s supply chain manager as a “vendor,” allowing her to receive ADA’s orders directly. Once received, the supply chain manager can combine ADA’s order with larger orders using the same PO number so the money can be traced to ADA although the order never actually goes to any vendor.

“With Hybrent, we now have full access to our procurement systems and no longer have to go line by line searching for and finding items vendor by vendor to create a purchase order. Instead, Hybrent does this for us. We just put in the items we need, or scan the barcode, and put in the quantity. It’s a lot faster and a lot easier than our previous process and anyone can do it,” said Frazier. “Working with Hybrent and Medline has been life-changing. I can order anywhere at any time and our orders arrive on-site first thing in the morning, enabling us to meet the needs of our clinicians so they can focus on better patient care.”

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