Medline adds 230+ new prime vendor partnerships in 2021

Medline grew its prime vendor partnerships in 2021 to include more than 230 additional healthcare providers and health systems, worth nearly $2 billion in annual, incremental medical supplies and solution sales across the continuum of care.

The new healthcare providers and health systems to partner with Medline in 2021 included Northwestern Medicine in Illinois, Rochester Regional Health in New York, Kelsey-Seybold Clinic in Texas, Windsor Lane Health Care in Ohio, Ochsner Health in Louisiana, and Brickyard Healthcare in Indiana.

“Throughout 2021, the Medline team remained laser-focused on supporting our customers through another challenging year and strengthening the resiliency of the healthcare supply chain,” said Doug Golwas, executive vice president of acute care sales for Medline. “Heading into 2022, that commitment remains as we continue to partner with our customers and together identify new strategies to enhance operational and clinical efficiencies.”

Partnering to make healthcare run better

With the scale of one of the country’s largest companies and the agility of a family-led business, in 2021, Medline continued to invest in its customers with customized clinical and supply chain solutions to enhance patient outcomes and operations.

• Through Medline’s Peri-Op Performance Program™, Springfield Memorial Hospital enhanced the health system’s patient care and outcomes in the operating room.
• In addition to the prime vendor agreement, Windsor Lane Health Care expanded the partnership to enhance its skin health practice by participating in Medline’s Skin Health Solutions Program.
• In light of COVID-19, Providence partnered with Medline to regain patient trust and engagement through the development of a pre-surgical bundle program designed to improve clinical operations and patient experience.
• Since launching in October 2021, the Medline Post-Acute Care Infection Prevention Program – a consultative approach that combines products and education to enhance best practices around environmental cleaning, hand hygiene and personal protective equipment (PPE) use – has signed more than 40 customer program agreements.
• Medline’s supply chain optimization and logistics team worked closely with individual healthcare facilities to create a new way to manage, store and deliver customer-owned stockpile inventory.

“Not only was this another consecutive year of growth for our prime vendor distribution agreements, but 2021 also marked a year of exceptional growth for our clinical solutions partnerships,” said Brad Mariam, executive vice president of post-acute care sales at Medline. “With Medline’s unmatched agility and ability to scale, we’ve continued to grow in an ever-changing market by customizing clinical solutions for our customers – creating partnerships that last, because we are responsive and invested, for the long term.”

Investing in future resiliency

Furthering its commitment to delivering superior customer service and building on Medline’s $1.5B Healthcare Resilience Initiative, the company opened five newly constructed distribution centers in 2021, with two more to be completed in 2022.  The newest LEED-certified distribution center, set to be fully operational during the first quarter of 2022, is located in Richmond Hill, Georgia, less than 30 miles from the Port of Savannah. The Richmond Hill facility will provide an additional 1.2 million square feet of space to stockpile needed supplies for customer distribution centers throughout the region – bringing Medline’s total medical-grade U.S. warehousing footprint to more than 27 million square feet. This enhances Medline’s nationwide disaster preparedness capacity, allowing the company to provide inventory management services, expand customized third-party logistics (3PL) capabilities, and further support Medline’s CERT™ (Customer Emergency Response Tools) program – a subscription-based service to store and manage critical emergency inventory.

In October 2021, Medline also completed the previously announced transaction with an investor partnership group of Blackstone, Carlyle and Hellman & Friedman, some of the world’s leading investment firms. The company plans to use the new resources from the partnership to expand its product offerings, accelerate international expansion and continue to make new infrastructure investments to strengthen its global supply chain.

Learn how Medline tailors solutions across the entire continuum of care as a manufacturer and distributor.